by Farrukh Abadi
The Mexican currency took a sharp hit following Donald Trump’s electoral victory, who promised to place a 25% tariff on Mexican imports unless it stops the flow of “migrants and drugs” into the country. Despite this, newly inaugurated Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum rushed to congratulate Trump on his electoral victory earlier this week. While she initially stated she would wait until all the votes are counted, later in the same day she wished Trump her “most sincere congratulations,” stating, “There will be good relations with the United States. I’m convinced of that.”
On the same day, Sheinbaum met with the CEO of BlackRock and the director of BlackRock’s private equity firm in Mexico City. The US finance monopoly BlackRock is the top money manager of the imperialists in the world, controlling a total of $11.5 trillion in assets.
Economic Basis of Sheinbaum’s Subservience
Last year, Mexico overtook China as the leading exporter to the US—the destination of 80% of Mexico’s exports—further entrenching its semi-colonial status and dependency on the US. Mexico is increasingly dominated by US capital as the latter pivots militarily to East Asia to contain Chinese social imperialism. This has taken the form of imperialist megaprojects such as the Interoceanic Corridor and the Maya Train, logistic and economic zones dominated by foreign capital that have poisoned the land and displaced large numbers of peasants and indigenous populations.
President Joe Biden has also pushed for US tech monopolies to invest in the creation of semiconductor factories in Mexico as an alternative to Taiwan. Under the system of bureaucratic capitalism in Mexico, such foreign investment is largely subsidized by the workers and peasants themselves through significant tax breaks by the comprador Mexican government, essentially handing over land and resources to monopolists for free.
While the development of technology has allowed industry to be distributed internationally along key logistical routes under imperialist control, imperialism also heightens contradictions internationally that restricts this distribution. The shift in microchip production from Taiwan to Mexico owing to heightened contradictions between US imperialism and Chinese social imperialism in turn exacerbates contradictions between the workers and peasants of Mexico and US imperialism, creating a volatile situation just outside the US imperialists’ gates. Already in the last few months alone in Mexico there has been mounting tension between the new government and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation as well as continued resistance against the imperialist megaprojects. When taking Latin America as a whole, especially the ongoing people’s war in Peru and the agrarian and new democratic revolution in Brazil, the situation expresses itself as a powder keg.
Mass Migration is Caused by Imperialist Crisis
The forced displacement and increased destitution of Mexican peasants and workers fuels mass migration to the US, which the imperialists control the flow of for their economic and political gain.
Over the last few years, the Biden-Harris administration has pressured the Mexican government to ramp up its security apparatus to limit the number of border crossings into the US. This came amid the economic crisis and mass layoffs as well as political attacks against the Democrats by the Republicans, who have now successfully wrested control of the state bureaucracy. The comprador Mexican state complied, both under its previous administration and the current President Sheinbaum, who has reaffirmed her party’s harsh border policies in service of US imperialism under the guise of humanitarianism.
Earlier this year, Sheinbaum’s opportunist party authorized US military entry into Mexico, and last year, under her party’s administration, a migrant detention center just yards from the US border burned down with inhabitants inside as Mexican security forces stood by. The Biden-Harris administration once again fulfilled Trump’s wishes better than he was able to, forcing Mexico to act as a buffer zone to its southern border and making them pay for the US’s border security.
Sheinbaum, the representative of bureaucratic capitalism in Mexico, facilitates its semi-feudal and semi-colonial status by pandering to US imperialism and expanding its domination despite her opportunistic, pseudo-left rhetoric of “breaking the glass ceiling”. While the relationship between the US and Mexico is dressed up in terms such as “bilateral trade” between “key partners”, there is nothing equal about the imperialist domination of a semi-colony, where Mexico’s bureaucrat capitalist economy lies at the mercy of mainly US imperialism. These trends, inherent to imperialism, will continue under the renewed leadership of Trump and facilitated domestically in Mexico by Sheinbaum.
Photo: Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum meets with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink on November 6, 2024. Photo retrieved from X.
