Fact Check: will Trump’s tariffs solve his Mexico ‘immigration problem’?

US president announces 5% tax on all goods
from neighbouring nation in bid to halt migrant influx

In Depth

In a White House press statement, the US president said that a
5% levy would be imposed on all goods from the neighbouring nation
from 10 June, and that the tariff would gradually increase up to
25% “until the illegal immigration problem is remedied”.

Trump has long accused Mexico of not doing enough to stem the
flow of people across the border, alleging that Mexican authorities
have made insufficient attempts to halt the so-called migrant
caravans originating in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, says
the BBC.

The US president says that America has been “invaded by hundreds
of thousands of people coming through Mexico and entering our
country illegally”, and says that he will not back down on tariffs
“unless and until Mexico substantially stops the illegal inflow of
aliens coming through its territory”.

What is Trump claiming?

According to The Daily Telegraph, Trump has experienced
“mounting frustration” at his failure to drive down illegal
immigration numbers – a key pledge of his presidental election
campaign in 2016.

The paper reports that the president has ramped up his
anti-immigration stance this year by forcing out some of the most
senior figures in Homeland Security, the government department that
handles immigration, indicating he wanted “a tougher immigration
approach”.

The Guardian says the biggest migration surge
on the US-Mexican border in a decade has seen an average of
4,500 mostly Central American migrants arriving daily,
“overwhelming the ability of border patrol officials to handle the
numbers”.

During a White House briefing, a spokesperson said that the
number could be far higher, with as many as 100,000 migrants
passing through Mexico on their way to America’s southern border at
“any one time”. The details of this claim are unclear.

But after Democrats in the House of Representatives put
paid to Trump’s promise to build a wall along the length of the
US-Mexico border earlier this year, the US president has been left
with few options for fulfilling his pledge to drive down
immigration. As a result, he has now strayed into controversial
territory – tariffs.

“For decades, the United States has suffered the severe and
dangerous consequences of illegal immigration,” Trump said this
week after announcing the tariffs. “Sadly, Mexico has allowed
this situation to go on for many years, growing only worse with the
passage of time.”

“Mexico must step up and help solve this problem,” he added.

The White House has confirmed that the tariff will begin at 5%
on 10 June and is due to rise to 10% on 1 July, 15% on 1 August,
20% on 1 September and 25% on 1 October. All goods imported from
Mexico will be affected, The Daily Telegraph reports.

White House sources told Fox News that the US would remove the tariffs
if Mexico stepped up its security efforts on the border, targeted
transnational smugglers, cracked down on illicit bus lines and
aligned itself with the US on a workable asylum policy. However,
acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said the
administration “did not set a specific percentage or specific
number” for its threshold to remove tariffs.

What are the experts saying?

Commentators – including members of Trump’s own Republican
Party – have come out in force against the prospect of new tariffs
on Mexico.

To some, Trump’s extremely liberal use of tariffs as a
political tool is objectionable and reckless. Chuck Grassley,
the US Senate Finance Committee chairman and a Republican who
represents Iowa, has slammed the move, calling it “a misuse of
presidential tariff authority”.

“Trade policy and border security are separate issues,” Grassley
said, adding that the proposal would “seriously
jeopardise” the passage of a new trade deal involving Mexico,
the US and Canada.

The BBC’s economics correspondent Andrew Walker suggests
that Trump’s tariff proposal is “driven by a political issue –
which is not to say that previous tariff moves did not have any
politics behind them”. He says it is sure to have “financial and
economic consequences”.

“Perhaps he hoped that a welcome side effect would be improved
competitiveness for American industry,” Walker says. “Well, half
the potential impact for the first stage in the proposed tariffs
hikes was wiped immediately by a decline in the value of the
Mexican peso, which has the effect of making Mexico a little more
competitive, at least until the tariffs come into effect.”

The Guardian says that, if implemented, the measures are “bound
to trigger retaliation that would hit Trump-supporting farming and
industrial states”. The move could also shake financial markets at
a precarious time for the president’s trade policy as the White
House pressurises Congress to approve Trump’s revision of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).

Dow futures plummeted more than 200 points on Thursday evening
after the president announced the new tariffs.

Even Beijing has weighed in on the move, with Chinese foreign
ministry spokesman Geng Shuang expressing sympathy for Mexico.

“The United States has repeatedly taken trade bullying action.
China is not the only victim,” he said.