The worrying thing about the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is that it slips (in a not very veiled way) that Washington will deliberately seek to keep Latin America in underdevelopment, promoting a unequal integration of the hemisphere. For example, the document states that the United States will seek to build regional supply chains and encourage the relocation of companies to “friendly” countries, but Latin American companies must use American technology for the production of goods and focus on the manufacture of low-value-added products that do not compete with the production of American companies and that at the same time satisfy the demands of US consumers for low-cost products.
So far I summarize my last week’s column . Now, I am interested in focusing on the effects of the relaunch of the Monroe Doctrine for Mexico’s domestic politics and for the review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement (USMCA) that will take place in 2026.
First of all, it is worth clarifying that the National Security Strategy is a document that contains a vision of Latin America as a region and certain objectives and lines of action to achieve said vision, but that does not mean that the Trump government will have the resources, capabilities and political will to pursue those objectives and execute those actions. In good Mexican: from saying to doing there is a long way.
Even so, the document is very worrying for Mexico as a neighbor of a power with imperialist ambitions. In some areas, the publication of the strategy is simply the formalization of dynamics that have already been brewing for months in the bilateral relationship. For example, the document emphasizes the need for Mexico to continue collaborating in Washington’s immigration policy, preventing people without documents from crossing the national territory and reaching the northern border.
Similarly, the strategy warns that “narcoterrorist organizations” are a threat to national security; Latin American countries (including Mexico) must contribute to the eradication of this threat and, if that is not enough, the United States reserves the right to use military force. That is to say, the US government is formalizing in a document of the highest level the threats of Trump and his close circle to intervene militarily to combat criminal organizations. in Latin American (or Mexican) territory.
This means that, throughout Trump’s administration (which ends in early 2029), the Mexican government will have to deal with the real possibility of a military intervention by the United States, which would be extremely destabilizing for the country’s internal politics, for the bilateral relationship and for the regional economy.
As if that were not enough, to prevent this possibility from materializing, Mexico must continue to subordinate its security policy to US interests. As I have explained in others texts this subordination carries three risks: (i) regional outbreaks of violence (similar to that of Sinaloa); (ii) that transnational drug trafficking be combated (which is what most worries the United States) instead of territorial control and the violent extraction of local economies by organized crime (which is what most affects the daily lives of Mexicans); and (iii) that the capture of “big fish” and their subsequent delivery to the United States be prioritized over the dismantling of the criminal regimes .
On the other hand, the strategy confirms that for the Trump administration, trade is linked to national security, which makes it valid to link diplomatic, economic, cooperation and all kinds of issues in its bilateral relations. For Mexico, this means that in the review of the T-MEC not only issues strictly related to trade will be discussed. Rather, the United States will take the opportunity to demand concessions from Mexico on other issues linked to internal politics (seeking guarantees, even informal ones, for US companies in areas such as tenders, the energy sector, the telecommunications sector and lack of legal certainty), natural resources (water, strategic minerals, energy, etc.), technology (adoption of US and non-Chinese technological advances) and trade and investment flows from other countries (better registration of their origin, containment of the “trade triangulation” of China and prevent other countries from using the benefits of the USMCA to sell products in the United States).
