Today, Explained - Trump trolls the neighbours

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

President-elect Trump says he can see Justin Trudeau becoming governor of “the great state of Canada.” It’s part of a pressure campaign to get big concessions on trade and immigration from Canada and Mexico. This episode was produced by Haleema Shah, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Victoria Chamberlin, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Plaster figurines of Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, and Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum for sale at a crossing in Tijuana, Mexico. Photo by GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Past and future President Donald Trump isn't being very nice to our neighbors. He said he'd drop 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico on day one. This tariff will remain in effect until such time as drugs, in particular fentanyl, and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country. That threat has Canadians saying, How dare you compare us to Mexico? And has Mexicans saying, Rude, Canada. But it's certainly getting everyone's attention.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took a trip down to Mar-a-Lago to be like, What's the deal, Donald? Will it work? Nobody knows. But after he left, Trump called Trudeau the governor of the 51st state. Rude, Donald. We're going to ask what the next block party might look like on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from WebRoot. WebRoot believes in cybersecurity.

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I'm Mary Beth Sheridan, Bureau Chief for The Washington Post in Mexico. Mexico's got a new president. The United States has an incoming president. How's that feeling right now in Mexico? Definitely a fascinating moment. People are very worried, I would say, because, of course, Trump is coming in very focused on Mexico with threats to impose tariffs. He's even talked about using the U.S. military to go after fentanyl producers. The president pulls me aside on at least a couple occasions and suggests that maybe we have the U.S. military shoot missiles into Mexico. We need a military operation. What's happening? What you're just telling me? We need a military operation. These people have become military. I will deploy all necessary military assets, including the U.S. Navy, to impose the full naval embargo

in the cartels. I did that before and it worked. What we did was incredible. There's just a lot of uncertainty in Mexico and everybody's very focused on what Trump is going to do. Let's just speak about what he said explicitly. He obviously says a lot, but what's he said since winning the election? So Trump posted on Truth Social that he would put a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada if they didn't stop the flow of migrants and fentanyl over the border. So that's pretty much alarmed, well, both countries, I would say. But in Mexico, particularly, Mexico is very dependent on the U.S. market. 80% of Mexico's exports go to the United States.

So any measure like that would definitely tip Mexico into a recession. Trump has also talked about possibly using the U.S. military to go after fentanyl producers in Mexico. And Mexicans are very nationalistic. They remember U.S. invasions, and they are very worried about that. We are a free, independent, sovereign country. There will be good relations with the United States. I'm convinced of that. When you say use the U.S. military to go after fentanyl producers, whatever it might be,

we're talking about bombing Mexico, which we've discussed on the show before. You know, it's really unclear what would happen. And I think Trump has intentionally left it a bit unclear. I mean, he's talked about sending the military to the border. People around him have talked about using special forces, possibly bombing fentanyl labs. It's a little unclear both what he would do and whether he would do it with Mexico's permission. By the way, I doubt very much Mexico would give permission for something like that, but that point is left kind of undefined at the moment.

So, that lack of clarity is something that makes people very nervous. Has Mexico done anything yet to address Trump's threats? So they've been really eager to sit down with Trump's people, which has not happened yet. Claudia Sheinbaum has spoken. She's the president of Mexico. She's spoken twice to Trump by phone. And both sides have described those conversations in very positive terms. And Sheinbaum is trying to kind of quiet the fears both of Mexicans in Mexico and migrants in the U.S. who are there, you know, unauthorized and could face deportation.

She's trying to kind of keep the markets from going crazy and keep people from worrying too much. For our compatriots and their relatives who are here, for Mexican companies and entrepreneurs, there's no reason to worry. So far, the plans that Mexico has made are very low-key, and a lot of the focus has been on Mexicans in the United States who could be some of the primary targets for mass deportation. So Mexico is beefing up the legal staffs at its consulates and things like that. Do we know how Mexico's new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, feels about our past and future president, Donald Trump? Her predecessor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who left office at the end of September, had managed to create a pretty good relationship with Trump, to everybody's surprise.

We've had a great relationship right from the beginning, and I think that maybe was against all odds. A lot of people were betting against it, but they've learned not to bet against us, I suspect. I know they've learned that in Mexico. Lopez Obrador is a leftist nationalist, and Lopez Obrador gave in to Trump's demands on curbing migration. And in exchange, Trump kind of left him alone on a lot of other fronts. So the question is, Claudia Sheinbaum is the new president. She is definitely a leftist. She's the protege of Lopez Obrador. But she's a different personality. She's the protege of López Obrador, but she's a different personality.

She's a scientist, much less charismatic, obviously female. And there's been a lot of questions about whether she will be able to establish the bond that López Obrador had with Trump. Instead of distancing ourselves, we are deciding, we're opting to walk together towards the future. We want to privilege understanding. You know, López Obrador, I think, and Trump, in part, had this respect because each saw the other as the head of a movement. Claudia Sheinbaum won with a commanding majority in the elections last June. But she kind of rode on the coattails of López Obrador. So she may not have quite the same stature. So far, they've both said their conversations were very positive. So we'll see what happens. Do we have any sense of who she wanted to win the presidential election in the United States?

Oh, she was so careful about not expressing any preference, because I think she understands Mexico needs to have a good relationship with the United States. In particular, the economies are so intertwined, so many Mexican jobs depend on the exports to the United States. So she didn't want to do anything that would get her off on the wrong foot with the new president. If you look carefully at what's been going on, Mexico has become just a crucial ally for the U.S. in stopping migration. So under President Biden, in particular, in the past year, the Biden administration leaned on Mexico, migrant arrivals at the border, the detentions by the US Border Patrol had reached historic high in December. And the Biden people came down and really had a tough talk with the Mexicans. And Mexico cracked down in a huge way. They have done about a million detentions since then. And the number of people being migrants being detained at the US border has dropped by 75%. So Mexico has a crucial role to play in terms of being able to stop migrants. is that the U.S., both consumers and U.S. business, depend tremendously on things made in Mexico, everything from fruits and vegetables to cars to Oreo cookies. I mean, the two countries are very—the economies are interwoven. Even our Oreo cookies? I didn't even know that.

You bet. Cheez-Its, all kinds of snack foods. Yeah, they're made in both countries now. And stuff goes back and forth. Think about Oreo cookies are made using US wheat. Mexican beer is made using barley from Idaho and Montana. You know, Trump has talked about these 25% tariffs that he could put on Mexico and Canada because of migration and drugs. But those would wind up having a real boomerang effect for American consumers and for the American companies that rely on Mexican parts for, you know, auto factories in Detroit or airplane factories in the U.S. and so on. Tell us a bit more about the boomerang effect.

What could the U.S. economy look like if Trump went ahead and imposed 25 percent tariffs? What could the relationship with Mexico look like if Trump sort of, I don't know, unilaterally decided to start bombing drug production sites in the country? So I do think that consumers could feel this very quickly in the U.S. For example, the Mexican government has calculated that pickup trucks sold in the U.S. could be $3,000 more expensive with these tariffs because a lot of the pickups and or the parts are made in Mexico. You look at stuff like agriculture, You know, in the winter,

the berries that are in American supermarkets come from Mexico, largely. Mexico has a longer growing season. And in a lot of cases, they're actually grown either by American companies sometimes or in sort of joint venture type arrangements, right? Think about during the pandemic when Mexico closed some of its factories, the Pentagon got all worried because the parts for the airplanes that the defense contractors build for the U.S. Army and Navy, they weren't coming. They couldn't build those planes. So that's the kind of commercial side. I think on the drug side, you know, Mexico is a very proud, very nationalistic country, and the public would not tolerate any kind of U.S. unilateral military action. I think that would be that would really destroy the relationship.

And it would be pretty chaotic for both countries, particularly in their economies, I would say. It's funny, this trade fight he's trying to pick with Mexico and Canada at the same time, if I'm not mistaken, it's kind of pitted Mexico against Canada a little bit. Oh, the Mexicans have been pretty horrified that, you know, the headlines have been Canada's throwing us under the bus. And what happened is, well, the Canadians, on the one hand, are worried about the possibility that Mexico could be sort of a backdoor for Chinese cars and auto parts and so on, that would come in. And the Canadians are saying the Mexicans aren't being as tough on China as we are. Now, the Mexicans say, hey, China is still a pretty small exporter to Mexico, and there's not a lot of evidence

that Mexicans say that there is some kind of backdoor thing going on. Canada is heading into its own elections pretty soon. So the theme of trade has emerged, particularly on the provincial level, where some officials who, at least in the Mexican vision, are trying to make hay out of this issue. But the Canadian government has gone so far as to say, well, let's just leave Mexico out of the North American free trade agreement, you know. And the Mexicans are not amused at all. It's so funny. It's like one friend's fighting with two friends, and then the two friends start fighting with each other, too.

Yeah, I think it is very much seen as an effort by Canada to strengthen its hand with Trump. But it's hard to imagine that it will work. Mary Beth Sheridan, she covers Mexico for Mexico City for WashingtonPost.com. We're going to talk about the Canada of it all when we're back on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Mint Mobile, the company that thinks you're probably pretty cynical about deals right now. Why does Mint Mobile think so? Well, Mint Mobile assumes you've seen hundreds of can't-miss, must-buy sales, but then you realize that each one comes with fine print that makes it all pain, no gain.

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period at shopify.com slash explained, all lowercase. That's shopify.com slash explained to upgrade your selling today. shopify.com slash explained. Today Explained is back. We mauled Mexico. Now it's time to crow about Canada. To do so, we reached out to Kaylee Glenn at Duke University. She's been following the threats, the tariffs, the tumult. Prime Minister Trudeau himself took a trip to Mar-a-Lago to meet with President-elect Trump in a way that received some mixed reviews in Canada, at least.

Some saw this as a potential strategy for a leader who knows how to deal with president-like Trump, meeting him on his home turf, figuring out how there might be a way to dampen the tariff rhetoric. But on the other hand, Trump is not yet president. And so there are folks who have been critical about Trudeau's apparent deference to the incoming president. We're also seeing provincial leaders and regional leaders responding to these threats of tariffs. So Ontario Premier Doug Ford, for instance, has recently threatened to enact sort of province-wide retaliatory measures in the form of cutting off Ontario's energy supply to specific United States if the tariffs are imposed on Canadian goods. We will go to the full extent, depending on how far this goes, we will go to the extent of cutting off their energy,

going down to Michigan, going down to New York State, and over to Wisconsin. I don't want this to happen. And this is not exactly a weak threat. Ontario's energy supply to the United States amounts for providing over 1 million homes with their electricity. And this would have regional impacts within the United States, particularly in states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, which all account for large dollar amounts and large

quantities of trade with Canada and with Ontario specifically. What's also interesting is that Ontario Premier Doug Ford has mentioned that he is planning on meeting with other provincial premiers in Canada to sort of coordinate a potential response across the provinces to any sort of tariffs that are imposed by the United States. Trump got a chance to sort of rearrange the relationships between Canada and Mexico in his first administration, and he took it. How did that go over? In Trump's first term as U.S. president, he went ahead and threatened to impose tariffs on Canadian and Mexican products and actually went ahead and did impose them. But what happened in Trump's first term was that Canada and Mexico retaliated. Canada imposed reciprocal tariffs on steel and aluminum products that remained in place

until NAFTA was renegotiated to become the USMCA. I will say that we just ended a nightmare known as NAFTA. They took our jobs for a long time. They took it for a long time, and we now have a brand new US-Mexico-Canada agreement. It's a whole different ballgame. The renegotiated NAFTA into the USMCA was widely perceived to have included terms that were

viewed as quite preferable for the United States. But now Trump is coming out before he's even in office, barking at Canada and Mexico and threatening 25% tariffs. Does that mean he didn't quite get it right the first time? I think what this means is that the goals of what a second term Trump administration is trying to achieve really matter here. Candidate Trump mentioned the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and specifically mentioned that the border between U.S. and Canada and the border between US and Mexico is a key issue that he signaled he might use tariffs to address. So if the goals of the tariffs are in fact security in nature, it's not entirely clear how tariffs would bring about desired policy change given that Canada and Mexican leaders have already signaled they

want to take action on the border. So that is to say there's already room for cooperation and there might not be necessarily a need for the pressure levied by tariffs. I think when people think about the border between the United States and Mexico, they think about migrants. But when people think about the border between the United States and Mexico, they think about migrants. But when people think about the border between the United States and Canada, they think about like, alongside President Biden, coordinated the implementation of what's called the Safe Third Country Agreement to specifically address these irregular migrant crossings. This once busy crossing between Quebec and New York is now quiet.

The Canadian government closed the door to Wroxham Road by extending something known as the Safe Third Country Agreement. Under the agreement, asylum seekers arriving by land at official crossings are turned away and handed back to American authorities. After midnight tonight, police and border officers will enforce the agreement and return irregular border crossers to the closest port of entry with the United States. So there's already been movement on the policy side between Canada and the United States to address things like irregular migrant crossings. Beyond that, it's not entirely clear what might be addressed in any sort of future policy move

beyond what Canada and the United States have signaled they already want to do. Trump loves to walk in and shake stuff up, right? He's a norm buster, a precedent setter, a precedent breaker. Is that what he's doing here with Canada and Mexico just before he even takes office, scaring the living daylights out of everyone about tariffs and borders and bombings even? which he dealt with traditional allies of the United States in ways similar to how the United States has treated its traditional adversaries with big threats and sort of harsh rhetoric for perceptions of unfairness. So in a way, yes, President Trump in his first term was precedent breaking in terms of how he spoke about and how he handled allies. For instance, in his first term was precedent-breaking in terms of how he spoke about and how he handled allies. For instance, in his first administration, he considered Canada to be a national security threat and therefore justifying the imposition of the tariffs that we saw in 2018.

I can't recall a time when the United States had considered Canada to be a national security threat to that degree after 1812. After the war. Correct, yes. I mean, Canada has been a security ally across many different formalized alliances with the United States. So it's not out of Trump's precedent, but it is out of U.S. precedent. Kayleigh Glenn is a postdoctoral fellow at the American Grand Strategy Program. If that sounds like your kind of program, you can find it at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Go Blue Devils! Or, as I'm told, perhaps go back to hell, ye devils. I'm Sean Ramos from him, and I really don't want to get involved. Our show today was produced by Halima Shah, edited by Matthew Collette, fact-checked by North Carolinian Laura Bullard and Victoria Chamberlain, and mixed by Andrea Christen's daughter and North Carolinian Laura Bullard and Victoria Chamberlain, and mixed by Andrea Christen's daughter and North Carolinian Patrick Boyd. This is Today Explained. Thank you.