Impunity, Delusions and a Bad Hair

The stock market is plunging, China’s economy is imploding, the Mexican peso is losing value, President Obama is speechifying with no one listening, Islamist terrorists of the ISIS brand are dynamiting two- thousand-year old Roman ruins in Syria and beheading 80-year-old men, and Donald Trump is flip-flopping by seeking “big” campaign contributions that he said he would never do.
Trump sells out, Islamist terrorists kill history, the longtime Mexican dictatorial Party – the PRI – proves it simply has lasted longer than it should have after Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon defeated the Stalinist leftists with honest vote counting and better-than-average-Mexican governance. Under Fox and Calderon, Mexico became a majority middle-class country by partially becoming a huge car exporter to over 100 countries of Mexican-manufactured cars.
American-owned business is thriving in Mexico. Wall-Marts are everywhere, Sam’s Clubs are everywhere, Ford Motors de Mexico, General Motors de Mexico, Sears de Mexico and ATT are everywhere employing thousands of people with multi-billion dollar payrolls. Millions of cars built by Nissan, Volkswagen, Toyota, Mercedes Daimler, Ford, Chrysler and General Motors are being exported with 70 percent to the United States.
While Donald Trump and his Rump Republican support accuse Mexico of ripping off the United States, reality is that 40 percent of those cars Mexico exports to 100 countries around the world have American made parts and/or components in them that are made by millions of American workers, trucked into Mexico by thousands of highly-paid American truck drivers and overseen by Americans shuffling paper around that wouldn’t have work without trade and cooperation with Mexico.
Our Mexican flank is not 100 percent healthy certainly. It still has a large cohort of poor; it has an “impunity” problem of officialdom being on the drug cartel payroll, especially the traditionally drug-cartel financed PRI political infrastructure. “Impunity” in Mexico is best described with the massacre of 43 demonstrating college students in Guerrero State (Acapulco) which was committed by police officers directed by a mayor and covered up by a state governor. The bodies have never been found and the federal government run by PRI criminals (President Enrique Pena Nieto) has not lifted a finger to find the bodies and the “intellectual authors” (a Mexican legal term) of the massive crime. “Impunity” means no accountability by officialdom in Mexico; it exists here in our politics in the form of the Donald Trump persona and campaign.
In a lengthy CNN interview, Donald Trump was asked by Chris Cuomo (brother of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo) how Trump would make Mexico pay for the wall Trump says he will build on the border, Trump answered that he would attach a fee (tariff) on every Mexican-manufactured car that Mexico exports to the U.S.
So, the definition of American-Impunity is an ignorant political candidate demanding tariffs on Mexican-made cars that contain 40 percent American-made components bought at market rates in dollars by the Mexicans. Tariffs on Mexican made cars is illegal to begin with. Trump is not a lawyer so he doesn’t know about law.
Cars made in Mexico, the United States and Canada are exempt from tariffs by the three countries of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). If the car is made in one of the three and if they contain 60 percent North American made content there are no tariffs. That has been the presidential negotiated and congressionally approved status of tariffs since January 1994. Apparently, Donald Trump doesn’t know that or he doesn’t care and says he will attach tariffs because his Lemming-like followers fervently believe every word he says even if the words lead to illegal actions. “High crimes and misdemeanors” like actions.
Trump must have missed his college class on Public Finance in which he would have learned that tariffs can only be applied by the United States Congress, not a Presidential candidate. But, maybe he’s right that “management” is all that is needed to implement his promises. He will build a wall paid for by Mexico because he is a great negotiator and manager. He will end illegal immigration from Mexico because he is a great negotiator and manager. He will force Ford (General Motors and Chrysler) to shut down their massive Mexican plants and move them back to the United States because he is a great negotiator and manager.
Donald Trump’s hero and political deity: Benito Mussolini (he had great hair also).
He wished in front of a less-than-capacity-crowd in Mobile, Alabama, that the election would be held today while, it is observed here, only 75 percent of Republican voters are against him.  He thinks he can win the GOP nomination with 25-30 percent; he thinks he can with the Presidency when 84 percent of Hispanics say they will never vote for him. He says he can win when 60 percent of Americans say they won’t ever vote for him.
Delusion is like a permanent bad hair day. Trump looks like he lives with both, every day.

Contreras’ books on immigration and drug cartels are at Amazon.com