The game of deciphering the difference between what Donald Trump says and what Trump means is already afoot with his call to raise tariffs against two of the country’s most important trading partners.
It’s a threat, not a promise, Republicans told NOTUS.
“What Trump is really saying is that illegal immigration is a priority for me and for our nation, and he is going to act quickly and he is going to take very serious actions to get the failed leadership of Biden on illegal immigration policy back under control,” South Texas Rep. Monica De La Cruz told NOTUS.
“There’s a difference between the negotiation and the reality,” Texas Sen. John Cornyn said. “I’m not gonna answer hypotheticals. We’ll wait and deal with reality if and when it happens.”
Mexico is the U.S.’s largest trading partner, but the relationship between Texas and Mexico is even closer, with billions of dollars in trade each year. While Mexico only became the top trading partner for the entire country around last year, Mexico has been Texas’ No. 1 for nearly two decades.
Goods traded across the border of the country’s neighbors are so far-reaching that it’s difficult to oversell the potential consequences of such a tariff, economists and industry representatives told NOTUS.
From cars to fresh produce to unrefined oil, they said that the potential negative impact would be hugely politically unpopular and decrease overall GDP as the cost of goods rose and people bought less. The Mexican president has also made clear that the country will retaliate if such a measure is enacted, which would have significant ramifications for farmers.
Trump said his proposed tariff would come as punishment if the two countries didn’t do more to stop people and drugs from coming across U.S. borders. Illegal crossings have dropped significantly, though, from their high point last year and Mexico has already made efforts to crack down on migrants coming through the country on their way to the U.S.
“On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
But other specifics are scarce. Both Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum have since responded. Trudeau met Trump in Mar-a-Lago soon after the post, and Sheinbaum had a call with Trump, though both leaders emerged from their discussions with different takeaways.
Republicans argue Trump’s conversations with Trudeau and Sheinbaum were a sign that the president-elect was angling more toward negotiation than enacting the tariff.
“President-elect Trump is always negotiating, and it seems that just the mention of a significant tariff like that got the attention of the new president from Mexico, and it may have opened up lines of communication that weren’t there before,” former Rep. Mike Conaway, who used to chair the House Agriculture Committee, said. “It’s hard to distinguish things that he’s going to do or things he’s just negotiating to do because he’s a very crafty negotiator.”
Businesses, however, have to interpret such ideas differently. Some small businesses are already trying to find new ways to source their products should Trump be serious about the tariffs.
“Uncertainty is the enemy of investment,” said Jon Barela, CEO of the Borderplex Alliance, a group that focuses on economic development across the southern border from Texas and New Mexico. “This 25% tariff has created a great deal of uncertainty with investors, especially in the manufacturing sector, and has frozen, at least in the short term, plans for expansion and relocation within our USMCA countries.”
USMCA, or the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, was one of Trump’s signature achievements in his first term, replacing NAFTA (though it didn’t stop him from threatening to put tariffs on Canada at the time either). Barela said it’s ironic that Trump would circumvent his own policy, but like congressional Republicans, he is hopeful it’s all bluster.
“He’s using it as a negotiating tactic, to indeed use it as leverage to affect some changes in migration and in the drug-smuggling activities that are occurring over the southern border,” Barela said. “However, he will have to decide very early in the administration whether these threats are going to be real or not.”
It’s too soon to say what Trump will need to see from Mexico or Canada to feel satisfied. Trade tensions could increase over a litany of issues, as they did in his first term.
“I think everyone should be taking this threat very seriously,” Barela said.
Dante Galeazzi, the president of the Texas International Produce Association, said, “It’s tough to say” if they think the tariffs will actually go into effect “until we actually see pen hit paper,” but “we have experienced an administration led by the president-elect, so we know that he will use a variety of tools as he looks to achieve his policy agenda.”
Conaway said the fact that you can never count Trump’s social media posts out is part of his power.
“The folks on our side of that tariff need to be making plans to assume that there’s a good chance that he will, if he doesn’t get the deal negotiated that he wants, that at least for some period of time that tariff would go in place,” Conaway said. “He’s got such a history of actually doing things he said that people on the other side of the negotiation will be reluctant to call his bluff.”
Democrats agreed.
“He often says things and doesn’t follow through with them,” Sen. Mark Kelly said. But, “we have to take stuff he says seriously.”
“You have to take everything Trump says seriously,” Sen. Alex Padilla said. “I’m expressing my concern to my Republican colleagues. They’re going to be in the majority. We’re going to need their help to stand up to Trump’s bad ideas.”
That said, the Republican Party has changed its tune on tariffs, with many supporting Trump using the levies “as a weapon,” as Sen. Roger Marshall said.
“The thing about tariffs, you can use it to stop wars, get hostages out. I mean, you gotta use your power, and I don’t think we’ve used it enough over the years,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville said. “You don’t know how far he’s gonna go or who he’s gonna use it against, but why not. I mean, you got the cards, play them.”
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Casey Murray is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.