Strong-Arming Latin America Will Work Until It Doesn’t

5 comments

1. Will Freeman: “Across the region, leaders are bracing for the impact of deportations—not only of their own citizens, but of ‘third-country nationals’ such as Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, and Cubans, whose governments often refuse to take them back. They are rightfully worried about what a sudden influx of newcomers and a decline in remittance payments from the United States will mean for their generally slow-growing economies, weak formal labor markets, and strained social services, not to mention public safety, given the tendency of criminal gangs to kidnap and forcibly recruit vulnerable recent deportees.

   “If Latin American governments are trying to negotiate the scope or scale of deportation behind closed doors, they do not appear to be having much success. Several leaders seem to be losing their nerve. Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, went from expressing hope for an agreement with the Trump administration to receive only Mexicans to accepting the continued deportation of noncitizens—perhaps because Trump threatened to place 25 percent tariffs on all Mexican goods as soon as February 1. Honduras threatened to expel a U.S. Air Force base on January 3 if the United States carried on with its deportation plans. By January 27, Honduras folded, saying that it would accept military deportation flights but requesting that deportees not be shackled. Guatemala is trying to draw the line at taking in only fellow Central Americans.

   “Most Latin American leaders will bend to Trump’s wishes on mass deportation rather than invite the strong-arm tactics he threatened to use on Colombia. One reason is that tariffs can really hurt the countries whose cooperation Trump needs most on deportations. Unlike most of South America, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador still trade more with the United States than with China. Only with Mexico, the United States’ largest trade partner, does the leverage go both ways, but even there it is sharply asymmetrical (more than 80 percent of Mexican exports go to the U.S., accounting for nearly a fifth of the country’s GDP) …”

   “So Trump will likely get his way in more cases than not. But he shouldn’t celebrate just yet, because the short-term payoff of strong-arming Latin America will come at the long-term cost of accelerating the region’s shift toward China and increasing its instability. The latter tends, sooner or later, to boomerang back into the United States.”

   Read more here: [https://theatln.tc/Unhl6SKG](https://theatln.tc/Unhl6SKG)

2. The US has been strong arming Latin America and many global south nations for decades, just look at the coup the US pulled with the Pakistani army against Imran Khan in 2022

   To be clear I don’t agree with what Trump is doing nor not am I’m saying this to justify his actions, I just want to point out that if the US wanted to treat global south nations like equals they should have started doing that years ago.

3. You could say this about legit anything that works.

4. This is true, if the US allows the Latin American countries to trade with China. If the US didn’t want it, it could forcibly block these countries from trading with China. It sounds absurd now, but moves such as these will be far more normal long term as the world become more multi polar. The United States will dominate as the regional hegemon of the americas.

5. “……will mean for their generally slow-growing economies, weak formal labor markets, and strained social services, not to mention public safety, given the tendency of criminal gangs to kidnap and forcibly recruit vulnerable recent deportees.”

   It sucks, doesn’t it. I wonder if The Atlantic mentioned these same things happening in the US as the result of these population transfers

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