Wednesday, July 24, 2019

If Trump Puts Tariffs on Guatemala Over Migration Will It Backfire in His Face?

In a couple of tweets, President Trump said yesterday that Guatemala could face new U.S. tariffs or remittance fees after declining to sign an agreement to force some U.S. asylum seekers to first seek protection in Guatemala.







Donald J. Trump
Guatemala, which has been forming Caravans and sending large numbers of people, some with criminal records, to the United States, has decided to break the deal they had with us on signing a necessary Safe Third Agreement. We were ready to go. Now we are looking at the “BAN,”....

Donald J. Trump
....Tariffs, Remittance Fees, or all of the above. Guatemala has not been good. Big U.S. taxpayer dollars going to them was cut off by me 9 months ago.
Trump sure is getting the hang of this "We are the Empire and you will do what we say" stuff.

He is pushing Guatemala, Mexico and other countries in the region to act as buffer zones and take in asylum seekers who would otherwise go to the United States.

 But Abelardo Medina, a senior economist at the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies told Al Jazeera that "Guatemala does not have the resources or the capacity to be a 'safe country.' Guatemala does not even have the resources to attend to its own citizens."

Further, according to Medina, a ban would backfire.

"A ban would be catastrophic in the short term for businesses and it would also lead to increased unemployment, which would generate more immigration, [to the United States," said Medina.

Trump, to put it mildly, is not a deep thinker.

-RW



1 comment:

  1. Unfortunately, your articles end up in my news feed far more often than I'd like them to.

    So, what happened man? You were talking that good $&#* a couple days ago, and yet, APnews reports: "US, Guatemala sign agreement to restrict asylum cases".

    It's almost as if the world doesn't follow a strict adherence to libertarian principles. Weird.

    Contrary to your posted remarks from Abelardo Medina, I'm sure Guatemala will be just fine. After all, the added human capital could never be a problem, right?

    ReplyDelete