‘Mexico will survive’: What Mexicans are telling me about Trump

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MEXICO CITY — Landing in the heart of Mexico in late January, in the throes of U.S. President Donald Trump’s muddled launch of a trade war with America’s neighbours, has been deeply unsettling. On the streets of Mexico City, the sense of foreboding is palpable.

Trump has set in motion a new kind of game that up-ends free trade in North America and destroys the 90 years of trade agreements since U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt and Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King signed off on a reciprocal trade agreement in 1935. Mexicans and Canadians are united in the need to make sense of the Trump 2.0 agenda.

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“I know Mexico will survive,” Victor Zenteno, our local guide assures me, his voice defiant and confident. “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, followed more recently 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 convinced his country can withstand this new crisis.

Over the course of a week together, I’ve had several chats with Victor, the affable local chef from Mexico City who is guiding our tour. His mother lived in Edmonton for several years, giving Victor, now 48, some insight into how Canadians are wired — though he’d forgotten, and chuckled at remembering, it’s the pursuit of  “peace, order and good government” that stiffens the spine of Canada as a nation.

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For a moment, we ponder, “what kind of game is Trump playing?” But not even our American friends can explain. The threat of heavy tariffs could be a blunt negotiation by a transactional president to extract concessions from trading partners or worse, a blatant pursuit of Manifest Destiny.

While in Mexico City, I try to meet with Canadian diplomats and businesses to discuss the implications of Trump’s “America First” mandate — in particular, Canada’s newly appointed ambassador to Mexico, Cameron MacKay, and corporate decision-makers invested in projects that span the continent.

But many here still hold their cards close to the chest. They will await the directives of political leaders — Justin Trudeau and Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum — both of whom have promised retaliatory tariffs reflecting their own brand of nationalism. In Canada, “Buy Canadian” is the new rallying cry and provincial premiers are threatening unilateral action, for example, removing American liquor from store shelves or targeting individual U.S. states that voted Republican.

After the folly of nearly 10 years of virtue-signalling politics at the federal level, we’re figuring out again what it means to be a Canadian, I explain to Victor. Perhaps it’s convenient nationalism in the time of crisis, but hopefully it’s enduring. In an odd way, the country might thrive by pulling together and collapsing provincial trade restrictions that get in the way of our future.

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Nationalism in Mexico seems more deeply rooted, I observe. “We live with crisis and we live with laughter,” Victor reflects. And he adds, Mexicans know how to live with ambiguity. “You don’t need to stand up and fight,” he says, “you just need to make some changes.” For example, he chuckles, maybe we don’t sell to China directly; we can just let China continue to invest in Mexico.

Plus, there are nearly 40 million people of Mexican descent living in the United States right now and Mexicans will stick together. “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 options too, Victor suggests. Create a tech fund; go to the United States and grab all the brilliant people who want to leave and bring them to Canada and boom, you have a new technology dream team. “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 many conversations with locals in Mexico over the past week, I’ve heard echoes of this same bravado. In a three-hour trek to visit the tiny village of El Rosario, site of a wondrous monarch butterfly sanctuary, I asked Carlos, our local guide, what he expected Mexicans would do if Trump made good on his threat to impose 25-per-cent tariffs on exports to America. The assuredness, and bluntness, of his answer surprised me.

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“We live in a multipolar world now,” he stated. “I drive a VW vehicle manufactured in India,” and the engine oil he uses 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. become too onerous, he was confident Mexico had a Plan B. I wondered how many Canadians would speak so resolutely of our country’s options. On the morning on Feb. 1 — the day Trump’s tariff threat landed with a thud in Mexico and Canada — a well-dressed man in the lineup to a celebrated breakfast place in Mexico City baited me with questions about Trudeau. “Are you rid of your prime minister yet?” he snickered. When I inquired how his political leaders planned to retaliate, he assured me his country was well prepared.

“Mexico will not be a transit point for illegals being deported from America,” he declared, “and our President Claudia Sheinbaum is no slouch.” But he acknowledged it wouldn’t be easy. “Trump’s a smart business guy, but he’s noisy,” he said, snapping his fingers and thumb together uncomfortably near my face, to mimic a mouth talking.

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National pride can be a good thing. I’m old enough to remember the 1970s, a time when national pride 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 could certainly learn a thing or two about national pride from the Mexicans.

Strolling through the stalls upon stalls of fresh vegetables at Mexico City’s largest food market, an elderly tomato vendor mistook me for an American. “You don’t like us anymore,” she said in Spanish, staring at me not in anger but with a deep sense of betrayal. I quickly assured her I was Canadian and shared her nervousness about the new administration in Washington. We were in the same economic boat, I said with a smile.

After that brief but telling encounter, I pinned a small Canadian flag to my lapel. That’s something I’ve not done since the Iraq war. It’s a new, new world order.

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