Breathe
By Stephanie Henaro
The United States and Mexico find themselves playing a game of Poker in which each side bets its homeland, while the cards of nationalism move.
Exchanges of words and bluff are part of, but the point here is that when you are playing against someone who has much more money than you and doubles your bet - not necessarily in the Paco Ignacio Taibo sense - that's the end of it.
This is exactly what is happening to Mexico with the United States. Although we are not a colony or protectorate of anyone, we are extremely vulnerable to the wishes of our northern neighbor because exports represent 40% of our GDP and a little more than 80% of them go there.
The enigma is over and the Mexican eagle returns to prostrate on a cactus devouring a snake, while we all devour our nationalist popcorn, with the sole purpose of feeling better and saying that we won, even though we still don't know what.
Continuity is a word that defines Claudia Sheinbaum's victory in the elections, but also Trump's. If under AMLO, 14,000 members of the National Guard were sent to the southern border to prevent the imposition of tariffs, under Sheinbaum, 10,000 members of the National Guard were sent to the northern border for the same purpose.
It is clear that Trump won by using the National Guard for his purposes without having to invest a single peso, and succeeding in turning the Mexican borders into a buffer, but what is not clear is whether Mexico won something more than what it was supposed to have already or whether dignity is enough. Because it seems that, at least lately, we have plenty of it.
We must be clear that although the tariffs are now on hold and not the bilateral relationship, the poker game is not over yet and it will get more interesting when the U.S. government pushes to end the "intolerable alliance" that it described in its document on Saturday, in which it puts the Mexican government and drug traffickers as partners. Something that after all is not new to Mexicans and goes beyond this administration.
Just to remind ourselves of the laughter we had at Ecuador's tariffs on Mexico - as a result of a foreign policy where the only thing we need is to be urinated on by a dog - it is appropriate to say that U.S. exports represent 11% of its GDP and only 15% are destined for Mexico.
