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Mexico—Friend, Enemy, Neutral, or Something Else?

Mexican nationals, likely cartel members, recently crossed the border and shot and wounded an American hiker. Did they assume that Joe Biden was still president, and so it was still a veritable open season on Americans without consequences?

Mexico also recently balked at allowing a U.S. transport plane to land, returning its own nationals apprehended as illegal aliens.

Was its attitude that Alejandro Mayorkas was still Homeland Security Secretary and thus working with Mexico to ensure that millions of illegal aliens could stay in the U.S. indefinitely?

After four years of Biden’s appeasement, Mexico seems to assume that it has a sovereign right to encourage the flight of millions of its own impoverished citizens illegally into the U.S. and further assumes that it can fast-track millions of Latin Americans through its territory and across our border.

Mexico either cannot or will not address the billions of dollars of raw fentanyl products shipped in—mostly from China—and then processed for export to the U.S. by its cartels across a nonexistent border.

Mexico seems to have little concern that some 75,000 Americans on average die from mostly Mexican-imported fentanyl each year—more deaths in just the last decade than all the Americans killed in action during World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined. Who then is our friend, and who is our enemy?

This appalling death toll is in part due to the deliberate efforts of the cartels to mask fentanyl as less deadly narcotics or camouflage the poison by lacing it into counterfeit prescription drugs.

Mexico encourages its expatriate illegal aliens to send back some $63 billion per year in remittances. That huge sum constitutes one of Mexico’s largest sources of foreign exchange, surpassing even its tourist and oil revenues.

These billions are often subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. America’s local, state, and federal governments provide billions of dollars in food, housing, and health care entitlements that allow Mexico’s citizens, illegally residing inside the U.S., to free up the cash to be sent home.

According to U.S. census data, almost every year, the trade deficit with Mexico has increased from about $50 billion twenty years ago to $160 billion today.

That astronomical figure neither includes the $63 billion American outflow in remittances nor the multi-billion income from the cartels’ illicit drug sales in the U.S.

Although one would never know it from the rhetoric of Mexican politicians, the entire Mexican economy, both legal and illicit, hinges on America accepting a worsening asymmetrical relationship.

Yet the U.S. has a lot of leverage with Mexico to ensure that it no longer assumes a permanent huge trade surplus with the U.S., turns a blind eye to massive fentanyl shipments that kill thousands of Americans, encourages its own citizens to enter their neighbor’s country illegally, and counts on massive cash remittances from the U.S.

Loud rhetoric, threats, and ultimatums do not work.

Usually, they earn Mexico’s furious retorts about Yanqui imperialism and ancient bitterness about a lost Aztlán.

Former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador used to brag about the millions of illegal aliens that were residing in the U.S. He further advised expatriate Mexican-Americans not to vote for Republicans, whom he felt one day might close the border.

Obrador rarely reflected on why millions of his own citizens were fleeing his own country—only that it was a “beautiful” thing that they did.

Did Obrador hate Trump more for challenging him by trying to stop the illegal influx or Biden for embarrassing him by welcoming millions of them into the U.S.?

So, what should be the U.S. response to Mexico’s passive-aggressive policies?

Smile, praise Mexico as our greatest trading partner, and then quietly inform them that illegal aliens will be bussed to the border.

Once there, they could be given a generous care package, escorted through a border door, and left on the Mexican side from which they entered and thus could then be escorted in caravans home in the same manner that they arrived.

To maintain cordial relations and politely gain Mexico’s attention, we need a radical change in tone and action beyond just ending catch-and-release, finishing the wall, and making refugee status requests possible only in the home country of the applicant.

Rather than worry about who is sending remittances, why not politely place a 20 percent tax (about $12 billion) on all cash sent from the U.S. to Mexico?

We could also hail our mutual friendship and then reluctantly slap tariffs on imported assembled goods until the two-way trade is roughly balanced.

Who knows, once the U.S. is respected again and not considered an easy mark, Mexico could once again become a fine and reciprocal friend to the United States.

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About Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004, and is the 2023 Giles O'Malley Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and the Bradley Prize in 2008. Hanson is also a farmer (growing almonds on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author of the just released New York Times best seller, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, published by Basic Books on May 7, 2024, as well as the recent  The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump, and The Dying Citizen.

Photo: An American flag (L) and Mexican flag (R) fly along the US-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas on January 22, 2025. On his first day back in office US President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border "to repel the disastrous invasion of our country." (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP)

Notable Replies

  1. Which part of - make it illegal to send money - remittances - out via any wire transfer service - Western Union, etc. - unless you are: A legal resident and can prove you actually earned the money legally.

    Which part of this would end the problem

    of that 50 billion a year out flow - immediately if not sooner - isn’t perfectly obvious to anyone with half a brain in their head?

  2. Avatar for Alecto Alecto says:

    Let’s not kid ourselves. Mexico was, is and will always be a frenemy. Clearly, the US has lacked any leadership where Mexico’s persistent offenses against Americans are concerned. We need leadership, and our Nightmare Neighbor to the South needs a beatdown, literally and figuratively.

  3. Mexico is a Narco state. One cannot separate the Mexican government from the Cartels.
    President Trump said he would announce a series of Tariffs against both Mexico and Canada if either nation fails to take action to bring their sides of the border under control.

    The President has a vast array of actions that can be taken from very specific targets to an across the board tariff percentage. The American people have been loud in their approval for removing illegal aliens from within our nation’s borders and the tactics used by the press and the Democrat Machine against Trump 1.0 no longer work against Trump 2.0.

    People, within and without are welcome to FAFO. Their surprise will be great indeed.

  4. I don’t think polite, diplomatic language is even appropriate. Given the arrogance and hostility Mexico has shown, I think nothing less than acerbic, hostile rhetoric, backed by even more hostile diplomatic, economic and kinetic action is required.

    Yes, we need to tax remittances. Yes, we need to impose stiff tariffs. And yes, we need to begin military operations along the border (or deeper if necessary) to root out the cartels. And if Mexico complains, hike the tax on remittances and tarriffs.

    The beatings will continue until morale improves. If Mexico wishes to act like a belligerant, hostile neighbor, then we shall treat them like one.

  5. You’re exactly right, Dr. Hanson in describing what amounts to an abusive relationship with Mexico. Like Trudeau scamming millions to come to Canada on false assumptions, cynically leaving them no alternative but to go south, Mexico has also ramped up its scams against the US to the breaking point. Short of war, tariffs become the best solution, and it’s high time. Our relationship with too much of the world reflects our excessive concern for the welfare of other nations, but it has long since become too onerous to sustain. This should apply in particular to Mexico. Besides tariffs, our cross-border (mostly one-way) traffic with that country should be curtailed. We don’t have a borderless deal with Mexico, but many there (and some on this side) operate on the assumption that we do. A needy Mexico created extremely long lines at border checkpoints, which was done on their behalf almost exclusively. What is in our nation’s best interest is now too often at wild variance with Mexico’s.

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