GOP governors deploy troops against largest trading partner

Eight U.S. governors have deployed National Guard soldiers to the border with our largest trading partner in what can only be described as geopolitical dissonance.

Republican Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida love posing next to the concertina wire, fast gunboats, camouflaged troops and anti-personnel buoys. I imagine Govs. Glen Youngkin of Virginia, Henry McMaster of South Carolina and Jim Justice of West Virginia will soon follow.

Activating citizen soldiers and sending them hundreds of miles from home has become table stakes for GOP governors seeking attention. The troops supplement Operation Lone Star, Abbott’s freelance security theater production, not assisting U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Polling shows Republican primary voters love this kind of strongman jingoism. The politics of hate run strong in the party, so it’s no surprise the governors don’t talk about Mexico’s importance to the U.S. economy.

This month, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said Mexico has dethroned China as the nation’s largest trading partner. Bilateral trade with Mexico from January to April totaled $263 billion.

“Mexico-U.S. trade during the first four months of 2023 represented 15.4 percent of all the goods exported and imported by the U.S.; the Canada-U.S. share followed at 15.2 percent and then the ChinaU.S. share at 12 percent,” Luis

Torres, a senior business economist at the Dallas Fed, reported.

Our neighbor to the north held the title as our biggest trade partner until 2014, when imports helped China grab the crown. But Beijing’s growing militarism and unfair economic practices led former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump to impose tariffs and sanctions.

China policy is the one thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on, and with good reason. China ignores World Trade Organization rules, relies on forced labor and leverages economic power to oppress less-powerful nations.

Border policy, on the other hand, has divided the parties for 37 years. Congress passed the last major immigration

reform package in 1986 with the approval of President Ronald Reagan, who took a kinder view of those desperate to enter the country.

“It is true that our borders are out of control. It is also true that this has been the situation on our borders back through a number of administrations,” Reagan said on signing the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. “I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though some time back they may have entered illegally.”

Since then, GOP politicians have sown hatred and fear of the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, as the poet Emma Lazarus described them. Trump made America safe for racists again when he

built his first campaign around denigrating Mexicans as diseased murderers and rapists.

While Republicans continue espousing bigotry against young people fleeing horrible circumstances and offering cheap labor, Mexico is becoming more critical to our economic and national security.

The latest figures reveal the value of free trade in North America, especially in automaking. About 89 percent of trade with Mexico was in manufactured goods, and that will grow as more companies move operations out of China and to our southern neighbor.

Mexico has always been Texas’ largest trading partner, receiving a third of the state’s exports. More than 446,000 Texans owe their jobs to trade with Mexico, according to the

Business Roundtable, a nonprofit research group supported by the world’s largest corporations.

Yet politics trumps economics for men like Abbott, who wastes billions of taxpayer dollars and millions of hours of people’s lives on Operation Lone Star. Every independent assessment has shown that the border operation has produced more photo ops than security.

Remember the wall of steel, which was a line of Department of Public Safety SUVs parked side by side for 100 yards? Abbott is doing one better with his buoys anchored to the Rio Grande river bottom with nylon webbing across a similar distance. The border, by the way, is 1,241 miles long.

Border Patrol officials recently complained that Abbott’s concertina wire is blocking officers from reaching immigrants, putting everyone at risk.

Polling shows immigration is a top concern among Republican voters, and it’s a compelling issue to rally a base that wants to see more deportations and an invasion or bombing of Mexico.

Mexico has its problems, and we need order. But instead of stunts, we need to cooperate with our largest trading partner, fix our immigration process and put more people to work making money, not standing along the border rattling sabers.

Eric Gay/Associated Press Republican governors are using troops against Mexico — not just our neighbor to the south but also our largest and most important trading partner.