United States – Mexico Bilateral Relations Under President Donald Trump.

Abstract

United States-Mexico bilateral relations can best be described as a ‘bromance’ – a love-hate relationship; their ‘rich’ history bears that out. Donald J. Trump during the early days of his presidency was a major threat to U.S.-Mexico bilateral relations. The threat posed by President Trump to U.S.-Mexico relations occurred along three main dimensions – his utterances/ rhetoric, foreign policy agenda, and personality. The economic benefit of US-Mexico relations appeared to be one-sided in favour of Mexico, prior to Trump becoming president, as reflected by the 100-billion-dollar trade deficit with Mexico. To top it all up, Mexico through its immigration policies was making the United States also feel unsafe at its southern border, by allowing migrant caravan to pour into the United States’ southern border. These coupled with other factors prompted Trump’s strong stance against Mexico. The study, thus, sought to examine U.S.-Mexico bilateral relations under President Donald Trump. The results of the study showed that prior to Trump becoming President, the status of U.S.-Mexico relations remained relatively stable. In the last two decades, domestic changes in the United States included but not limited to a (1) shift in the U.S.’ traditional view of immigration as an economic and cultural issue to now viewing illegal border crossings as a national security threat especially fueled by the crisis of 9/11. Although doom and gloom, triggered by domestic changes in both countries, were predicted for U.S.-Mexico relations under President Donald Trump; the bilateral relations between both countries seemed to have rather strengthened to the amazement of onlookers. 100 days post-Trump presidency was a total mess on the immigration and narcotics front, with the drug cartels being emboldened and making more money than they have ever made in a long while. There is, therefore, the need to re-evaluate policies to determine effective policies, so that ineffective ones can be discontinued, while maintaining effective ones regardless of which political party brought into force.