Lots of information to share in our report today, as the Trump administration leaves no day without events or controversial statements to address. Last Monday, the moratorium agreed with Mexico and Canada on the imposition of tariffs, following talks between the 47th U.S. president and his counterparts in Zócalo Square and the old Langevin Block, made headlines. I agree with this analysis provided by the AP which does not see “the big deal” in the sealed commitments. That is, for the harsh rhetoric employed by Trump, and the real problems he pointed to—especially in the Mexican case—, it is hard to believe that with thousands of troops mobilized on the Mexican border and the appointment of a “fentanyl czar” by Ottawa the sky is getting bluer, although there are certainly undisclosed agreements.
Independent experts evaluate that much of what was announced regarding the border reinforcement was already being enforced in some way, or could have been agreed upon without making so much noise. Since Sunday itself, by referring that he would talk to Claudia Sheinbaum and Trudeau, Trump had suggested that the atmosphere was going to cool down faster than it seemed, with him managing the timing and playing with the feelings of neighboring governments and economic actors such as banana producers in the troubled state of Chiapas. In other words, I am increasingly convinced that the pause was decided—as far as the White House is concerned—before the phone calls.
Shainbaum's move is a sort of replication of the one taken by her political tutor Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2019 to appease Trump when the latter threatened tariffs in his first stint in the White House. However, the first woman at the helm of the Aztec country is taking friendly fire as she would be neglecting the always tense internal insecurity situation. The mobilized troops will be stationed in areas with high levels of irregular migratory movements, arms and drug trafficking. Trump pledged to attack the smuggling of cutting-edge weaponry into Mexico, a dynamic that fuels the firepower of the cartels, an issue he has presented as a sensitive one for his administration.
Japan's Nissan and Germany's Volkswagen source about 27% and 43%, respectively, of their U.S. sales from Mexico, so they would be two businesses hard hit if Aztecs and Americans fail to reach a definitive agreement to avoid crossed tariffs. Good data on trilateral trade—i.e. including Canada—here.
Trump tariffs will only add to the pain for hard-hit Nissan | Reuters https://t.co/wAGLtlo3Fm
February 5, 2025— RK (@iamkrajah)
Remittances
Mexicans abroad, mainly those living in the United States—around 12 million according to AFP—, broke the annual record of remittances sent to their homeland, although they did not manage to surpass the market benchmark set at 65 billion dollars. It seems that tensions over tariffs and deportations slowed down a flow that has maintained an upward trend in recent years. On average, each Mexican abroad sends 393 dollars. It is also interesting to note how much this figure represents of the Mexican GDP—about 3.5%—compared to other Latin American nations such as Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras, where this value is well over 23%. The Trump administration designated last week the only Cuban company officially authorized to process remittances. Although Cubans in the United States forcibly learned to send them without appealing to the regular channels—in many cases even appealing to cryptocurrencies such as $HIVE itself—, being away from that flow has been a hard blow for the Cuban government, which has been deprived of an inflow of fresh foreign currency that until 2019 it monopolized.
USAID in the eye of the hurricane
The Trump administration's humiliating rebuff to USAID is also impacting in different ways in our region, with narratives dispersed according to what has been their chequered relationship. The narrative from the West Wing's Republican power brokers, seasoned with the controversial visions of mogul Elon Musk, is that USAID is an irretrievable spawn plagued by leftist lunatics with a proven track record of insubordination who don't want to answer simple questions like “what does this program do?” “[It is a] ball of worms,” the owner of X and SpaceX would say, appealing to rhetoric amplified by controversial Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who said that most U.S. foreign assistance funds ”are used to fuel dissent, fund protests and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda.”
In the same vein, Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum spoke out, recalling López Obrador's denunciation of USAID funds earmarked for groups with a political agenda directly opposed to MORENA's administration. “This agency has financed research projects to groups opposed to the government, [as] is the case in Mexico, [where the organization 'Mexicans against Corruption and Impunity'] has had support from this agency, demonstrated. [How] is it that these aid agencies get into politics?” the Aztec president questioned. Although again Cuba would have more to say about this aspect, since, as I have explained on several occasions, the regime change program that USAID has implemented against the island since 1996 is handled with the greatest possible information secrecy, emulating in practice a secret program, although it is not declared as such. Moreover, this is the only facet of USAID's work that Cuba has known about since 1959, totally unrelated to its food and medicine distribution network.
The idea in the Oval Office is to merge the essential functions of USAID in the operational routines of the State Department and get rid of the others. USAID was created by John F. Kennedy to fulfill the mandates of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and also in response to limitations he saw in the State Department, which is charged with providing political guidance. For the time being, an order from Donald Trump is in force stopping the agency's operations in most of its action areas, including disbursements attached to contracted obligations. In this case, it is interesting to see a Marco Rubio who allocated and controlled from the Foreign Relations and Appropriations Committees the funds of this agency and never issued severe and conclusive judgments on its management, signing now its death certificate and sending it to his former colleagues.
Haiti
Although Rubio in his confirmation hearing defended the multinational security mission in Haiti, primarily composed of some 600 Kenyan police officers, the United Nations received notice from Washington that the program is also subject—at least partially—to a freeze in funding imposed by Trump to review the alignment of all foreign assistance with his policies. The change will have an “immediate impact,” a U.N. spokesman alleged. So far the United States, a critical funder of international deployment in the troubling nation, has disbursed about 13% of the total funds committed. The back and forth with the funding comes at another moment of crisis within the larger security crisis caused by the scourge of criminal gangs. The United Nations counts more than 300 dead in three massacres in recent months. “We are more concerned about the cuts that will affect Haiti in areas such as food,” warned in other sense Dominican President Luis Abinader.
Before leaving Costa Rica, where he pledged to issue waivers to continue US support to that country because of the funding freeze, Rubio blamed Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua for the migration crisis in the region. Without ignoring the serious curtailment of individual freedoms in those countries, to some extent mediated by US policy itself, it is difficult to hold any of them accountable for the decision made by Hondurans, Mexicans, Peruvians, Salvadorans, Ecuadorians, Colombians, even Brazilians and Guatemalans to venture through jungles and expose themselves to organized crime to reach the United States. After passing through Panama and El Salvador, Rubio's next stop is Guatemala.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio alleged that some aid groups may have intentionally sabotaged projects to make a point after he froze most US assistance https://t.co/Aj0Np4eZ6R
February 4, 2025— AFP News Agency (@AFP)
Oh Bukele… 👇
President Donald Trump says he’s exploring option to send jailed US criminals to other countrieshttps://t.co/XudGRnMm3h
February 4, 2025— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune)
The first Gitmo deportation flight carried 9-10 immigrants 👇. Mexico has requested that none of its nationals in the United States be sent to the naval base in Cuban territory and has committed instead to receive them.
First military flight lands in Guantanamo Bay with migrants deported from the US https://t.co/gnK5SGUE9C pic.twitter.com/mEIfseaF1O
February 5, 2025— Dánica Coto (@danicacoto)
And this is all for our report today. I have referenced the sources dynamically in the text, and remember you can learn how and where to follow the LATAM trail news by reading my work here. Have a nice day.
Posted Using INLEO
I think this statement self-contradictory. The mobilization of troops in the specified areas directly attacks the internal insecurity by imposing barriers to the production of financial profits by the cartels, and that is their source of power. As the USA eliminates the funding training, arming, and supplying cartels by the covert arms of the USG, acting against the relic forces in Mexico will spit roast the cartels and increasingly reduce their inimical power over the Mexican people, migrants, and the American polity as well.
I do not disagree with Bukele. However, I doubt the current administration will replace USAID with anything that doesn't do this. CIA cutouts will always do evil, because that's what cutouts are for, and any replacement of USAID will do the same crap. It is obvious to me that acting at such political levels will always enable contraverting the interests of affected populations. Only direct interactions of affected populations will not. To prevent being parasitized by oligarchies people themselves need to effect their policies with their economic assets, not delegate them to parasites with government titles.
Sovereigns rule. Subjects are ruled. Empowering officials subjugates populations.
Unfortunately, that is not the fact. It is the power of such institutions as USAID and NED that the harm done polities and communities through such aid is facilitated covertly in those institutional mechanisms. The personnel distributing aid are secretly hired because of their political malleability and then trained in spreading dissent, promoting demonstrations that can be used to impose riots, and ultimately to create color revolutions. That is the intention of all funds availed USAID and NED, and similar Western NGOs, like Save the Children, that Jill Biden is involved in. In every case these institutions are proclaimed as salvation but are perverted secretly to be damnation.
Regardless of the institutional structure, the covert machinations of oligarchs to harm Cuba will remain as they have been. Zero trust can be given to overt claims because the interests of oligarchies haven't changed, so their perversion of institutions will continue to be predatory. Only direct interaction between ad hoc civilian organizations, rather than governmental institutions, is actually revolutionary and independent of oligarchical usurpation. Institutionalization is the enabling mechanism that allows perversion to covertly corrupt beneficial political action. As long as civilians themselves interact to mutually benefit each the other, they cannot be infiltrated and betrayed to instead parasitize economic activity.
You will not see governments seeking to implement such ad hoc and civilian networking and interactions, because such economic beneficence is not the purpose of corrupt oligarchs that profit from governing cash cattle, whether in Cuba or the US. Economic beneficence can only be grass roots networking between populations across boundaries where both populations can benefit each other by forthright communications and endeavors in economic development using their own assets for the purpose. Wherever taxes are involved, parasitic oligarchs are feasting.
You are presumably an example of ad hoc civilian outreach exactly as I state is necessary. We talk to one another, and our economic interactions deliver directly our political intention to mutually benefit our people though our personal actions. Were we coordinating further trade and commerce by our connection here, we could increase our impact and beneficence to our communities. I am a market for Cuban cigars, and have supplies of currencies beneficial to Cuban producers, for example. Were we to effect commerce via necessary mechanisms to avoid interference, our people could directly benefit from that commerce, negating the oligarchies hell bent on their own aggrandizement of any economic interactions of our peoples.
Thanks!
👍