A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Now to Mexico. President-elect Trump has vowed to impose a 25% tax on imports from that country unless the government cracks down on the flow of migrants and illegal drugs. Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, condemned Trump's threats of tariffs and suggests that Mexico would respond in kind. With us now to provide a perspective from Mexico is Esteban Moctezuma Barragan. He is Mexico's ambassador to the U.S. Ambassador, right now, President-elect Trump's tariff threat is a social media post and not policy. How seriously are you taking it?
ESTEBAN MOCTEZUMA BARRAGAN: A Martínez, good morning. Good morning to your audience. Well, everything that the elect-president says, we have to take it seriously. But also, we know that we're going to be sitting in a negotiating table, and I'm sure that he will understand that Mexico is not the problem. Mexico is part of the solution because regarding the issues that he raised, which is migration and fentanyl, what we have done in the last year, from December to November of this year, is reduce the border encounters by 75%. This is what Claudia Sheinbaum, our elected - our president said yesterday in a letter to President-elected Trump. And also, half of the migrants that cross legally via Mexico - they do that because they have the CBP One program.
So we are doing a huge effort. working together with the U.S. to deal with the migratory flow. Regarding the problem of fentanyl, which we think it's a huge problem that we must tackle together, just last year, we detained 15,000 people in Mexico. So Mexico is working very, very closely to - with the U.S. regarding this fentanyl fight.
MARTÍNEZ: So, Ambassador, if you feel that Mexico is doing their part, why do you think President-elect Trump is making these threats, then?
MOCTEZUMA: Well, you know, we just finished an electoral time which has a lot of information that is not the information that you get when you are sitting in a negotiating table, reading the reports that have a very late and objective data. You know, we have - every day, we get thousands of weapons coming into Mexico from the U.S. And that's also an issue that the U.S. is tackling because we have to fight together, and we need international collaboration regarding fentanyl. You know that the precursors come from Asia, and they come to Canada, to the U.S. and Mexico. And so this is not an easy issue. But we are working very closely because we are committed with a region - North America - which is the region that has become the most competitive and humanistic region in the world, and we want to keep it like that.
MARTÍNEZ: So it sounds like...
MOCTEZUMA: We need to work together.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. It sounds like you just think that maybe sitting down across from each other might take some of the bluster away from what we're seeing on social media. But wondering - if indeed a trade war were to happen, a tariff war were to happen, what would happen on both sides of the border?
MOCTEZUMA: Well, you know, tariffs are inflationary. So what will happen is that everything that - you know, the Mexican and U.S. economy is so intertwined that we are producing together. It's not that just - we just buy and sell. So inflation is on the horizon if we don't work together as a region. And we have built this for 30 years, and we have built the most competitive region in the world.
MARTÍNEZ: That's Esteban Moctezuma Barragan, Mexico's ambassador to the United States. Ambassador, thank you very much for taking the time.
MOCTEZUMA: Thank you very much, A Martínez. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
