Tayo Oke; drtayooke@gmail.com
Before delving into this week’s topic in detail, an important apology is in order. This is about the fourth time the reader is being urged to peruse the United States President, Donald Trump, and his antics since his election in 2016. It is a lot of attention from this column for an attention-seeking President. But, we are talking of the President of the USA, the world’s only super-power. In as much as one tries to avoid giving Trump valuable column inches, he pulls out another of his conjuring media tricks by basically making policy on the hoof, or simply talking through his hat as he often does. Many a time, Trump, in his characteristic bombastic style, makes casual, but wild claims and exaggeration that reflects his real estate business background, which includes a lot of puffing bordering on what most decent people recognise as lies. It is extraordinary how the word “lie” and a President of the US can coexist so effortlessly. Yet, this has not affected his core base of millions of his teeming supporters and cheerleaders in the country. Why, you might ask?
President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945) once said of the brutal regime of the Nicaraguan leader, Anastasio Somoza (1937-1947), that although he might be a ‘son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch’, for his anti-communist stance and support for American capitalism. Fast forward to 2019 and Donald Trump. It seems as if his core base of supporters have concluded that, yes, Donald Trump may be a liar, but he is our liar. He is one of us.
Trump’s main campaign mantra in 2016 was: “We will build a wall along the US-Mexico border, and Mexico will pay for it, yes, they will pay”. His message of illegal immigration flooding the US, many of whom are Mexican “rapists, drug dealers and armed robbers”, struck a chord especially with blue-collar workers and other right-wing nationalists in America. Now, in office for three years and still trying to fulfil this cardinal pledge, he has twisted the seductive phrase around, saying that, well, he did not mean to say that Mexico would literally hand over the cash to build the wall, but that the country would be forced to cough up – somehow. He tried (and so far failed) to move money from defence spending to wall building. The particular directive from the White House has been challenged and stalled in court. So, what else can the embattled President come up with? Yeah, tariff! This has now turned into Trump’s magic silver bullet for foreign policy. Be it against European steel, or China trade, Iran, Canada, etc. It is now a weapon of choice for the US President who sees the world in black and white like you do, when you are not in fact running the largest economy in the world. A world in which the US can dish out punishment to other countries at will; a world in which the US has ceded all pretences to being the “leader of the free world”.
My contention here is that the latest policy of 5-25% tariff on Mexican imports (announced last week) goes beyond the issue of immigration. Trump claims that it is meant to make Mexico change its behaviour of unleashing a steady flow of immigrants into the US. Given that the US economy is in full employment right now, and in need of the same hard-working Mexican migrants to maintain its upward trajectory, why does the sight of Mexicans on US soil rile the President so much? Why does the presence of Mexicans across US cities get under the President’s skin and drives him so mad? Here is a plausible explanation.
America’s antipathy towards Mexico did not start with Trump; it’s a relic of the US history. It dates back to the Mexican-American War (1846-1847), when the US was still unsure of how large the ‘union of states’ should be. Mexico was originally earmarked for forcible absorption into the US, but the country fought back hard, although their gallantry in the face of the marauding US army was not enough to save the present-day US States of New-Mexico and Texas from annexation. Two Mexican territories ceded to the US, while mainland Mexico remained and blossomed as a Spanish-speaking independent entity that we know today. What happened subsequently was a trickling of Mexican and other Latino Americans into the US labour market, settling in and putting down their Spanish roots over time. Today, Latinos constitute the largest ethnic group in America (52 million) or 17% of the population. They have longer life expectancy and higher fertility rates than the average white population. While the white take caution on reproduction and pro-creation, the Latinos set no limits. This is so much that by 2055, the whites will no longer be a majority in America, although they will still be the single largest ethnic group. Growth in the Latino and other immigrant communities from non-white countries will catch up and overtake the dominance of white America in the long run. Imagine this, as of 2015, 14% of US population was foreign born, compared to just five per cent in 1965.
Mexicans have gone on to be more Americans than the Americans in the extent of their contribution to the development of the country, but without losing their identity. White racism towards them has also helped to cement their sense of togetherness and solidarity. Overtime, they have become economically and politically powerful. There is not a single echelon of political power that a Hispanic or Latino has not occupied, except the Presidency. ‘Mexican’ has become the shorthand for all Latin American immigrants, which Trump has also managed to turn into a term of abuse. The fear of being “overrun” by immigrants is very real for the US nationalists. The feeling is that the US defeated Mexicans in war only to have them become dominant through cultural assimilation of white Americans. This sticks in the gullets for Trump and his cohort of white supremacists in the US. But, statistical and demographic trends suggest they are swimming against the tide. The train has already left the station on that; it is unstoppable. According to “Pew Research Centre”, growth in the Hispanic and Asian populations is predicted to almost triple over the next 40 years: 48% white; 24% Hispanic; 14% Asian; and 13% Black. This is the march the white supremacists in America want to halt. They want to “take their country back” by enforcing tough immigration policy, stopping illegal (by extension, any kind of) immigration coming through Mexico.
When we examine the likely impact of the new tariffs on Mexico more closely, however, the consensus of opinion amongst experts is that they will hurt the US consumers more because, Mexico contains a huge chunk of the American manufacturers, who operate from there, principally to take advantage of the skilled and cheap labour, which then makes it possible to sell the US-made goods to Americans at cheaper prices. If implemented to the letter, the policy will hurt Trump supporters most, but a lot of them feel it is a price worth paying to ‘protect’ the US industry. They also know that the tariff issue is a ruse that masks the unpalatable motive of Donald Trump; which is to remake America in the image of white, ignorant, intolerant “shiny city on a hill”. Thankfully, it is the vision of a dwindling band of a dying sect that wishes to preserve white privilege in a kind of country that only exists (and must remain only) in their warped mind.
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