Mexico’s government on Monday signaled that it planned to hit back with trade restrictions of its own if President-elect Donald J. Trump followed through on his threats to impose sky-high tariffs on Mexican exports to the United States.
“If you put 25 percents tariffs on me, I have to react with tariffs,” Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s economy minister, told a radio interviewer on Monday. “Structurally, we have the conditions to play in Mexico’s favor,” he added.
The disclosure by Mr. Ebrard, who is poised to be one of Mexico’s top negotiators with the Trump administration, showcases the rising tensions between the countries in the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election.
During his campaign, Mr. Trump vowed to immediately place 25 percent tariffs on all goods from Mexico unless that country’s government halted the flow of migrants and drugs to the United States. If Mexico fails to respond to Mr. Trump’s satisfaction, he said, he could raise such tariffs to as high as 100 percent.
Such moves could send shock waves through the economy of Mexico, which is exceptionally dependent on trade with the United States, exporting about 80 percent of its goods to its northern neighbor.
But an array of sectors in the United States, including farmers and manufacturers of semiconductors and chemicals, also relies on exporting to Mexico, which last year eclipsed China to become the largest trading partner of the United States. Complex supply chains also intertwine the economies of both countries, especially in the automotive and agricultural industries.
Altogether, U.S. exports to Mexico accounted for nearly 16 percent of overall American exports in 2022, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.
“A tariff war doesn’t end well,” said Valeria Moy, the general director of the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, an economic research institute. “The United States stands to lose — and Mexico stands to lose even more.”
“The answer to tariffs is not more tariffs; it’s to sit down and negotiate,” Ms. Moy added.
That seems to be the strategy of Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who has not echoed her minister’s claims. Instead, she has said her government is eager to meet with Mr. Trump’s transition team before he takes office.
“It is important to get in touch, to know what they are thinking and to move forward in coordination as much as possible,” she told reporters on Monday.
Ms. Sheinbaum and Mr. Trump had their first telephone call last week, which Mexico’s president described as “very cordial.” The renewed tensions hark back to the start of the first Trump administration, which began using tariffs on imports from Canada, China, Mexico and the European Union.
In 2018, shortly after Mr. Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on steel and 10 percent tariffs on aluminum, several countries taxed various other products from the United States. Mexico was among them.
Enrique Peña Nieto, then Mexico’s president, launched a two-pronged retaliation. He slapped 25 percent tariffs on imports of 51 steel products from the United States. He also set tariffs on several other imported goods — whiskey, pork, cheese, apples, cranberries, potatoes and ham.
An estimated $2.6 billion worth of U.S. agricultural exports to Mexico were affected, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
When Mr. Peña Nieto’s successor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, took office in 2018, Mr. Trump again said he would apply escalating tariffs on all Mexican imports until the flow of “illegal immigrants coming through Mexico and into our country” stopped.
The ONLY thing Mexico can do is to join BRICS. Whether BRICS would have them is another matter.