After securing the emptiest of hollow promises from the Mexican government, Trump reveals that his word means nothing. That’s a rare species of victory.
The news this morning is that Donald Trump will postpone the implementation of his new tariffs (targeting Mexico, at least) following a productive call with Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum. In exchange for her promise to “immediately supply 10,000 Mexican soldiers to the border,” Trump will hit pause on his sweeping new tariff schedule for one month. This, the MAGA movement maintains, represents total victory over not just America’s partners abroad but — far more importantly — Trump’s domestic critics.
It’s not hard to find chest-beating on social media if empty bravado is what gets you going. But the sequence of events that culminated in these assurances from Mexico City suggests that it was the MAGA movement that caved here.
Trump and his acolytes are apt to launch various competing rationales in favor of tariffs into the discourse, hoping that one will be proven retroactively accurate. But in the case of these latest tariffs, Trump insisted there was “nothing” his targets could do to avoid America’s economic wrath. It turns out that wasn’t true. The slate could be wiped clean for the low, low price of Mexico’s deploying 10,000 troops to its side of the Rio Grande.
It’s odd that Joe Biden managed to secure the same commitment from Mexico without imposing crippling uncertainty on the continent — uncertainty that persists and that businesses bake into their forecasts, bearing out the proven downward pressure that insecurity puts on commercial expansion and investment. And those commitments were clearly just cosmetic gestures, which the pro-Trump Right saw right through at the time. They were correct to note that it was a fig leaf, devoting their attention instead to the “migrant caravans” that somehow evaded Mexico’s newly vigorous scrutiny.
Viewed from this angle, it’s entirely unclear what triumph the MAGA movement is celebrating this morning. Trump promises sweeping and unavertable tariffs. Republicans wring their hands and beg Trump to back off, all while stocks collapse and the business community cries uncle. And after securing the emptiest of hollow promises from the Mexican government, Trump reveals that his word means nothing. That’s a rare species of victory.
Any port in a storm, I suppose. But from this vantage, the only party that caved here looks to be the MAGA Right. Our foreign adversaries and partners alike will take that lesson away from this episode, the triumphalist posturing on social media notwithstanding.