Trump’s Mexico Tariffs: Result of Congressional Obstruction

Congress and courts have undermined border security – tariffs are a last resort.

On May 30, 2019 President Trump announced that he was contemplating imposing tariffs against Mexican imports to the United States to force Mexico to assist in securing the U.S./Mexican border. The very next day, CNN reported, “Trump threatens tariffs on Mexico over immigration” while USA Today reported, “US Chamber weighing lawsuit against White House over Trump tariffs.”

Trump is now seeking to impose tariffs on the goods from Mexico to gain control over the highly porous southern border of the United States, through which tonnage of deadly drugs and other contraband freely flow into the country and unknown hundreds of thousand of illegal aliens enter without inspection. Trump’s action is the direct result of the unwillingness of the “leaders” of both the Democratic and Republican parties to have provided the administration with the tools it clearly needs to end the crisis.

While a wall on the border would not, by itself, end the immigration crisis, it would represent an important element of what should be a secure immigration system that honors America’s tradition of welcoming more lawful immigrants than the rest of the world combined by making clear distinctions between lawful immigrants and illegal aliens.

More than a decade ago Congress voted to fund a fence on the southern border. However, that fence was never built. Other measures were never implemented either, but continual promises of the creation of massive amnesty programs have served to encourage millions of aspiring illegal aliens from around the world to head for our borders.

For decades politicians made statements about how our immigration laws must be enforced and our borders secured against the illegal and uninspected entry of aliens, while making certain never to implement the measures to actually achieve those commonsense and achievable goals.

Unfathomably, now members of the Democratic Party claim that the situation along that border does not constitute an emergency or a crisis.

The first step to solving a problem is to acknowledge that there is one.

Anyone who could take all of the facts surrounding the border situation and declare that there is no emergency has to be either a fool or insane, or for ulterior motives, is happy, indeed ecstatic with the current state of affairs. These are the Democrat politicians who call for the end of immigration law enforcement altogether and castigate ICE agents as thugs to justify promulgating “Sanctuary” policies that shield illegal aliens, including those who pose a clear and immediate threat to public safety, from ICE.

This has cost thousands of innocent victims their lives.

For these immoral politicians, victims of these criminal aliens are simply “speed bumps” on the road to immigration anarchy and the end of U.S. sovereignty.

Some members of both political parties have weighed in about their concerns that imposing tariffs on Mexican goods would hurt American consumers and hurt corporate profits as a justification for their strong opposition to the imposition of tariffs.

The threat of a lawsuit by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce should not come as a surprise. After all, the Chamber of Commerce has been a strident opponent of border security. In fact, I would suggest that the real reason for the chamber’s adamant opposition to the threat of the impassion of tariffs is not so much about the economic fallout from such a tariff, but the possibility that Mexico might finally act to help the United States secure its border against the massive onslaught of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens that undermines national security, public safety, public health and the jobs and wages of American workers.

The greatest concern that the anti-American Chamber of Commerce has, and one I believe that is shared with the members of Congress who oppose the imposition of tariffs, is that Mexico might actually accede to President Trump’s demands that Mexico end the massive caravans of illegal aliens heading with sickening regularity to the U.S./Mexican border. One of the easiest ways for Mexico to do this would be to simply secure its southern border with Guatemala. It is a far smaller border than its northern border with the U.S. and would be highly effective.

I have testified at Congressional and state legislative hearings on immigration where the chamber of Commerce or other special interest groups with strong ties to the Chamber of Commerce also testified.

At those hearings I noted that the 9/11 Commission had made it clear that border security is national security and that the 9/11 terror attacks and other such attacks, both thwarted and those that were actually carried out, were only possible because of multiple failures of the immigration system, including failures to secure our borders.

In fact, the preface of the official report, 9/11 and  Terrorist Travel – begins with the following paragraph:

It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.

Incredibly some of those witnesses not only scoffed at my concerns and the concerns and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, but confronted me after the hearings and told me that my calls for enhanced border security must stop. They complained that while I saw our borders as America’s first and last line of defense against international terrorists and transnational criminals, to them secure borders were a serious impediment to theirwealth!

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is far more fixated on head-counts on international airliners, ball parks and theaters than they are on body counts at the morgue! It also has friends in both political parties, particularly the Republican Party.

For all of these open-border advocates and immigration anarchists, our immigration system has morphed from being a system that protects national security, public safety, public health and the well-being of Americans into a delivery system of unparalleled efficiency that delivers an unlimited supply of exploitable foreign workers who can be coerced into working for substandard wages under illegally dangerous conditions.

Our immigration system also delivers an unlimited supply of foreign students and foreign tourists and, for the immigration lawyers in both political parties, of greatest concern, an unlimited supply of clients for immigration law firms.

This has not happened overnight, although any shred of integrity to the immigration system has been stripped away by politicians who lack integrity.

Indeed, I wrote about this in a recent article, “Caravan Of ‘Migrants’ – A Crisis Decades In The Making.”

Securing the U.S./Mexican border would interfere with a delivery system that is far more efficient than Fed-Ex and UPS combined.

For those who oppose the imposition of tariffs, put the blame where it belongs: on the U.S. Congress that has impeded, obstructed and hobbled any and all efforts at border security while Sanctuary Cities beckon illegal aliens.

EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

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