Mexico is hitting back hard against the Trump White House on trade, filing a complaint Thursday with the World Trade Organization against the United States’ steel and aluminum tariffs.
The move came two days after Mexico proposing tariffs of its own that will heavily target the states of Texas and Alabama, an apparent effort to increase pressure on the White House by putting the economic pain on strongly Republican states.
“Clearly, the establishment of an additional import tax is intended to protect the United States industry from the economic effects of import,” Mexico’s WTO claim said. The complaint follows similar ones by the European Union and Canada. The complaints compel countries to meet to resolve the dispute. If no resolution is reached in 60 days, the complaining country may request that a panel sanction the offender.
The WTO move follows Mexico’s announcement of tariffs on about $3 billion worth of U.S. exports Tuesday in response to the Trump administration’s move last week to lift exemptions for Mexico from its newly implemented 25 percent steel and 10 percent aluminum tariffs. The White House’s move was partly an effort to wring concessions from Mexico in the ongoing North American Free Trade Agreement renegotiations.
The list of items Mexico will hit, according to a source with knowledge of the country’s strategy, includes several items for which the country is practically Texas’ sole market. They include: pork, where Mexico buys between 80-99 percent of Texas products; Whiskey, for which Mexico is two-thirds of Texas’ market; and flat-rolled iron, of which Mexico purchases 94 percent of what Texas makes. Alabama will also be hit hard with tariffs on flat-rolled steel, because Mexico accounts for 56 percent of its market for that product.
Wisconsin also will be hard as the list targets cheese as well. Mexico buys slightly over half of the products from the Badger State.
“These are products that have political implications in districts, where important House members and senators have been raising concerns to President Trump about how he is managing these decisions. At the end of the day, the effect of this will fall over voters that live in districts that have a voice and a vote in the U.S. Congress,” Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told Mexican radio station Grupo Radio Central last week.
