“The president is fighting a drug war, not a trade war.” So explained Peter Navarro, the Trump administration’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, describing President Trump’s plan to impose 25% tariffs against Mexico and Canada in his effort to pressure the two countries to step up their own work to shut down the cross-border traffic in illegal narcotics and illegal aliens. Trump is using tariffs – or, more accurately, the threat of tariffs – as a tool of foreign and national security policy, not economic policy.
This should not surprise anyone, either here at home or abroad. Since the 1980s, Trump has been a consistent voice in favor of using tariffs to “fight back” against trading partners he believes have taken advantage of us – and to induce behavioral changes in other countries.
He used them in his first term in office, and even for the same purpose against the same country – to motivate Mexico to do more to arrest the flow of illegal immigration into the United States. In May 2019, even as his administration was negotiating the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement to replace NAFTA, Trump threatened to impose a 5% tariff on all imports from our largest trading partner if he wasn’t satisfied that Mexico was increasing its efforts “to greatly reduce, or eliminate, illegal immigration coming from Mexico and into the United States.”
He issued the threat on May 30; by June 7, Mexico caved. Mexico agreed to take new steps to help stop the flow of illegal immigration into the U.S. Trump said the agreement included a pledge by Mexico to move 6,000 troops to Mexico’s southern border, with Guatemala, a source of much of the illegal immigration that passes through Mexico into the U.S. Mexico also agreed to house immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S. while the U.S. Government adjudicated their requests. This was the basis of the “Remain in Mexico” policy that was so successful in helping control illegal immigration across our southern border.
Trump doesn’t merely threaten tariffs – as his first-term tariffs against China show, he’s willing to impose them and make them stick. He began in 2018, imposing tariffs on solar panels and washing machines, then added tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and other items. Many of those tariffs were kept in place and even expanded by Joe Biden.
And let’s not forget Trump’s earlier use of a tariff threat in his second term in office, when, just a week after taking the oath of office for the second time, Colombia’s president refused at first to accept returning deportees from the U.S. Trump could not have hoped for anything better: Upon being informed of Colombia’s refusal to accept its returning deportees, Trump immediately threatened to impose tariffs unless the Colombian president relented. It didn’t take long: The Colombian president didn’t just agree immediately to accept the returning deportees, he deployed Colombia’s presidential plane to retrieve some of them.
“The Government of Colombia has agreed to all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay,” said a statement released by the White House press secretary. “Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again. President Trump will continue to fiercely protect our nation’s sovereignty, and he expects all other nations of the world to fully cooperate in accepting the deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States.”
America is the world’s largest economy. According to the latest figures from the World Bank, the U.S. economy’s Gross Domestic Product in 2023 was $27.7 trillion, by far the largest economy in the world. Our closest competitor, China, had a 2023 GDP of $17.7 trillion. In other words, our economy is more than half as big as China’s. And Mexico? Mexico’s economy generated a 2023 GDP of $1.8 trillion, about 6% the size of ours.
That imbalance gives Trump a huge advantage on the international front. Everyone wants (and needs) access to the U.S. economy. It’s not like they can find a market that big anywhere else; if they want to be involved in international commerce, they want to be in the U.S. market.
That simple fact, in Trump’s hands, becomes a weapon he can wield on behalf of his desired outcomes, a sword he can carry into whatever discussion he wants. All he has to do is threaten to unsheathe it from its scabbard. His actions in his first term and even in his second term (before he’s even been back in office for a full month!) show international leaders he’s willing to use that weapon if he feels the need. To him, tariffs aren’t a tool of economic policy as much as they’re a weapon of foreign and national security policy. He’s wielding them on our behalf, to Make America Great Again – as the American people want.
Jenny Beth Martin is honorary chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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