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‘Canadians proper now have to take a look at the probabilities,’ my information tells me. ‘Spend money on Mexico, attempt to work with Latin American nations’
Printed Feb 09, 2025 • Final up to date 16 hours in the past • 5 minute learn
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A protester in Mexico Metropolis carries an indication in Spanish that claims: “Trump your wall shouldn’t be a border, it is a disgrace.” Picture by Eduardo Verdugo/AP
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MEXICO CITY — Touchdown within the coronary heart of Mexico in late January, within the throes of U.S. President Donald Trump’s muddled launch of a commerce conflict with America’s neighbours, has been deeply unsettling. On the streets of Mexico Metropolis, the sense of foreboding is palpable.
Trump has set in movement a brand new sort of sport that up-ends free commerce in North America and destroys the 90 years of commerce agreements since U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt and Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King signed off on a reciprocal commerce settlement in 1935. Mexicans and Canadians are united in the necessity to make sense of the Trump 2.0 agenda.
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“I know Mexico will survive,” Victor Zenteno, our native information assures me, his voice defiant and assured. “I don’t know if we’re more prepared (than Canada),” he admits, “but I know we will survive because Mexico is a resilient country.
“After hundreds of years of fighting with Spaniards, hundreds of years fighting with ourselves, the American invasion, the French invasion,” Victor explains, adopted extra just lately by “the economic crisis of ’88, the economic crisis of ’94, the economic crisis of 2008, and the crisis created because of the earthquake of ’85, the crisis created because of the earthquake of 2017 and the crisis created because of Hurricane Otis,” he’s satisfied his nation can face up to this new disaster.
Over the course of per week collectively, I’ve had a number of chats with Victor, the affable native chef from Mexico Metropolis who’s guiding our tour. His mom lived in Edmonton for a number of years, giving Victor, now 48, some perception into how Canadians are wired — although he’d forgotten, and chuckled at remembering, it’s the pursuit of “peace, order and good government” that stiffens the backbone of Canada as a nation.
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For a second, we ponder, “what kind of game is Trump playing?” However not even our American associates can clarify. The specter of heavy tariffs might be a blunt negotiation by a transactional president to extract concessions from buying and selling companions or worse, a blatant pursuit of Manifest Future.
Whereas in Mexico Metropolis, I attempt to meet with Canadian diplomats and companies to debate the implications of Trump’s “America First” mandate — specifically, Canada’s newly appointed ambassador to Mexico, Cameron MacKay, and company decision-makers invested in tasks that span the continent.
However many right here nonetheless maintain their playing cards near the chest. They’ll await the directives of political leaders — Justin Trudeau and Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum — each of whom have promised retaliatory tariffs reflecting their very own model of nationalism. In Canada, “Buy Canadian” is the brand new rallying cry and provincial premiers are threatening unilateral motion, for instance, eradicating American liquor from retailer cabinets or concentrating on particular person U.S. states that voted Republican.
After the folly of almost 10 years of virtue-signalling politics on the federal stage, we’re determining once more what it means to be a Canadian, I clarify to Victor. Maybe it’s handy nationalism within the time of disaster, however hopefully it’s enduring. In an odd method, the nation would possibly thrive by pulling collectively and collapsing provincial commerce restrictions that get in the best way of our future.
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Nationalism in Mexico appears extra deeply rooted, I observe. “We live with crisis and we live with laughter,” Victor displays. And he provides, Mexicans know the way to stay with ambiguity. “You don’t need to stand up and fight,” he says, “you just need to make some changes.” For instance, he chuckles, possibly we don’t promote to China instantly; we are able to simply let China proceed to put money into Mexico.
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum arrives for a information convention on the Nationwide Palace in Mexico Metropolis. Picture by Yuri Cortez/AFP through Getty Pictures
Plus, there are almost 40 million folks of Mexican descent residing in america proper now and Mexicans will stick collectively. “We can collapse the American economy because we’re like 30 to 40 million people,” he claims, with eyebrows arching, “that’s 10 per cent of the economy over there in America.”
Canadians have choices too, Victor suggests. Create a tech fund; go to america and seize all of the sensible individuals who need to depart and convey them to Canada and increase, you have got a brand new know-how dream workforce. “Canadians right now have to look at the possibilities,” Victor reiterates, “Invest in Mexico, try to work with Latin American countries. There are other markets in Asia.”
In lots of conversations with locals in Mexico over the previous week, I’ve heard echoes of this identical bravado. In a three-hour trek to go to the tiny village of El Rosario, website of a wondrous monarch butterfly sanctuary, I requested Carlos, our native information, what he anticipated Mexicans would do if Trump made good on his risk to impose 25-per-cent tariffs on exports to America. The assuredness, and bluntness, of his reply stunned me.
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“We live in a multipolar world now,” he acknowledged. “I drive a VW vehicle manufactured in India,” and the engine oil he makes use of is imported from Russia. “I don’t have any problem saying goodbye to American goods; Mexico can look to BRIC countries for investment.”
Carlos wasn’t belligerent, he was a realist; if relationships with the U.S. grow to be too onerous, he was assured Mexico had a Plan B. I questioned what number of Canadians would communicate so resolutely of our nation’s choices. On the morning on Feb. 1 — the day Trump’s tariff risk landed with a thud in Mexico and Canada — a well-dressed man within the lineup to a celebrated breakfast place in Mexico Metropolis baited me with questions on Trudeau. “Are you rid of your prime minister yet?” he snickered. Once I inquired how his political leaders deliberate to retaliate, he assured me his nation was nicely ready.
“Mexico will not be a transit point for illegals being deported from America,” he declared, “and our President Claudia Sheinbaum is no slouch.” However he acknowledged it wouldn’t be simple. “Trump’s a smart business guy, but he’s noisy,” he mentioned, snapping his fingers and thumb collectively uncomfortably close to my face, to imitate a mouth speaking.
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Nationwide satisfaction could be a good factor. I’m sufficiently old to recollect the Seventies, a time when nationwide satisfaction was sparked by a hockey match between the Soviets and Canada’s best-of-the-best NHLers. It’s heartening to see patriotism being revived in Canada. And we might definitely be taught a factor or two about nationwide satisfaction from the Mexicans.
Strolling via the stalls upon stalls of contemporary greens at Mexico Metropolis’s largest meals market, an aged tomato vendor mistook me for an American. “You don’t like us anymore,” she mentioned in Spanish, looking at me not in anger however with a deep sense of betrayal. I shortly assured her I used to be Canadian and shared her nervousness in regards to the new administration in Washington. We had been in the identical financial boat, I mentioned with a smile.
After that transient however telling encounter, I pinned a small Canadian flag to my lapel. That’s one thing I’ve not accomplished because the Iraq conflict. It’s a brand new, new world order.
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