Every now and then, a narrowly framed news item offers up glimmers of pathways toward the possible resolution of much bigger problems. And so it was this week, with a New York Times story, briefly promoted with the red font label of “breaking news,” that heralded Mexico beating out China for the first time in two decades as the leading source of U.S. imports.
Every now and then, a narrowly framed news item offers up glimmers of pathways toward the possible resolution of much bigger problems. And so it was this week, with a New York Times story, briefly promoted with the red font label of “breaking news,” that heralded Mexico beating out China for the first time in two decades as the leading source of U.S. imports.
The long-term significance of this trade data may not be altogether obvious. And just how big a deal it could become will ultimately depend on concerted, long-term geopolitical strategy.
But Mexico’s fast-growing role as the chief U.S. trade partner could provide a treasure trove of solutions to some of the most difficult challenges facing the United States. These include successfully managing peaceful competition with China, defusing the political crisis surrounding immigration, and renewing America’s credentials as a positive-sum actor in the 21st century.
For a country that proclaimed virtual dominion over its hemisphere through the Monroe Doctrine, which dates to the first half of the 19th century, the United States has long been curiously indifferent to the economic well-being of the American world to its south. Putting the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement aside, one must go back to the Kennedy administration and its Cold War-driven Alliance for Progress to find a policy of engagement with Latin America with any real economic or political heft.
U.S. rivals have been far more strategic in linking their economic futures to neighboring regions. After experimenting with new models of globalization in Africa, in which it built infrastructure on a large scale, beginning in the 1990s, China followed up early in the last decade with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Many Western commentators were alarmed and befuddled by China’s grand entry into an Africa that they had long taken for granted, but the........