Earlier this week, President Donald Trump’s administration announced the imposition of 25-percent tariffs on imports from Mexico only to roll some of them back again. On March 6, the US president announced that he was exempting all products that are part of the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA) for a month.
Meanwhile, the Department of Defense continued its military buildup along the southern border, deploying an additional 3,000 troops.
Trump has claimed that these measures are needed to stem the flow of fentanyl and undocumented people trying to cross into the US from Mexico. Yet, data shows that fentanyl deaths have decreased significantly in the past year, and so has the number of border crossings.
So what is Trump’s real motivation?
First, Trump is trying to divert attention from the chaos of his own internal economic policies. Though he campaigned on “fixing” the American economy, inflation has increased to 3 percent, consumer confidence has remained shaky, petrol prices continue to rise, and thousands of federal employees have been laid off.
Second, and more importantly, Trump is trying to impose a Monroe Doctrine redux, where he can bully Mexico and, by extension, the rest of Latin America, into compliance with his new era of gunboat diplomacy without fear of retaliation.
These are dangerous times for Mexico and Latin America. The signs of a strategic and military buildup are clear: the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America”, the labelling of eight Mexican cartels as terrorist organisations, the stepping up of CIA secret drone missions deep inside Mexican territory, the deployment of a Stryker Brigade combat team to the border, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s declaration that “all options are on the table”.
The deployment of troops and the escalating rhetoric are creating the conditions for a US military incursion into Mexico. If one does take place, it would fit neatly into the long history of US aggression against its southern neighbour and Latin America as a whole, which began 200 years ago with the so-called Monroe Doctrine.
In 1823, then-President James Monroe put forward a policy, which under the guise of opposing European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere, sought to solidify US supremacy over the region.
The doctrine served as a springboard for US imperial expansion over Mexico’s northern territories during the Mexican-American war (1846-1848), when the US carried out a massive landgrab, taking over lands that are part of today’s states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado and Wyoming.
Then the US army used the upheaval of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) as an excuse to invade its southern neighbour two more times.
The doctrine served to justify the US invasion of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Cuba, as well as various covert interventions throughout Latin America.
Today, as the US faces challenges to its global hegemony from China and Russia in the Americas, a Monroe Doctrine redux is emerging as an ad hoc justification for re-asserting US dominance over the region.
Mexico is among the first to suffer for a reason. The country not only occupies a strategic location – sharing a 3,000km (2,000 miles) border with the US – but it also has the second-biggest economy in Latin America, with a GDP of $1.79 trillion. Although Mexico’s economy is tightly linked to the US, it has diversified its trade partners, with China – the US archenemy – being its second-largest trade partner with a trade volume of $100bn.
In 2024, Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) reached $477m, up from $13.6m in 2008. In 2023, there were reports that Mexico had expressed interest in joining the China-dominated BRICS, which were quickly dispelled by then-President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Nevertheless, this year, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva invited Mexico, as well as Uruguay and Colombia, to join the upcoming BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro in July.
Mexico is currently led by left-leaning President Claudia Sheinbaum Prado, who is a cool-headed but fierce leader, praised by peers. She enjoys a nearly 80-percent approval rating and has repeatedly stated that she will defend Mexico’s sovereignty.
In an effort to show that she is willing to cooperate and to avoid tariffs, her government has successfully stepped up anti-drug operations, turning over 29 high-level cartel leaders to the US and announcing a record number of arrests and seizures of fentanyl and other illegal narcotics in the last month.
But Trump is not really interested in addressing the complex problem of drug smuggling and migration that his country has created with its addiction to drugs and cheap labour. The US president really wants to use the military buildup at the border to intimidate the Mexican president and to curb the influence of China in Mexico.
Whether Sheinbaum will fall in line remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Trump will continue to use the pretext of the war on drugs and migration to establish his Monroe Doctrine redux over Mexico and Latin America. With this, he threatens to set the Western Hemisphere back over 200 years.
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.