Steve Cortes, former senior spokesman and strategist for the 2016 and 2020 Trump campaigns and current head of the League of American Workers, said President Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariff threat on Mexican imports shows that the president “knows how to wield the power of the United States” as a negotiator.
On Monday, Trump announced that he and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum participated in a “very friendly conversation” in which the pair negotiated a deal which will see Mexico supply 10,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to “stop the flow of fentanyl and illegal migrants” into the U.S. in exchange for Trump pausing the anticipated 25 percent tariffs on Mexican imports for a one month period.
The U.S. is Mexico’s largest trading partner.
On Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, Cortes said Trump’s deal with Mexico “proves” that Trump is highly skilled as a negotiator and deeply understands “how to wield the power of the United States.”
“This near-term victory, hopefully becoming a long-term victory, shows, number one, that Donald Trump knows what he’s doing as a negotiator. He knows how to wield the power of the United States. Number two, it shows that when it comes to trade..we have leverage,” Cortes explained.
“Trade is our most significant leverage that we have over other countries, whether they are friendly nations like Mexico or adversarial nations like China, because the American consumer market is the crown jewel of the business world. Everyone on planet Earth wants to export into the United States,” he added.
Cortes described Trump’s usage of U.S. trade as leverage against Mexico as a “friendly shove” to compel the country to work to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.
“We want to work with Mexico. We want to be friendly, good neighbors. By the way, good fences make for good neighbors. But sometimes they need a nudge, and that nudge – maybe more than a nudge, a friendly shove, if you will – was the tariff threat over the weekend which Mexico knew was going to be terrible for their economy that is so dependent on exports to the United States,” Cortes said.
“We don’t want confrontation, but in any relationship in life, particularly when it comes to international relations, there are times when we need to play the strong hand and that’s what Donald Trump just did, and Mexico cried uncle,” Cortes added.
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— MichaelPatrick Leahy (@michaelpleahy) February 3, 2025
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Mexican Soldiers” by Tomascastelazo. CC BY-SA 3.0.