So Much Bullshit

On Tariffs, Immigration and What Comes Next

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

I hope you all had a restful Thanksgiving and are gearing up for what’s to come. Lots of important stuff to kick off the month today, plus an #AMA video response for paid subscribers, which comes via a comment from reader “Marton’s Blotter.” For daily video shorts, please visit and sign up for The Salty Briefing on YouTube.

On Tariffs, Immigration and What Comes Next

Put this down as a marker: Donald Trump does not actually want to tank the American economy. All the talk about imposing 25% tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China (or was it 100% on China?) was and is a bunch of unmitigated bullshit to feed red meat to the MAGA base. To put it in terms that Trump would understand, it is kind of like the Village People playing YMCA and Macho Man on loop at the reunion show — songs that everyone knows by heart. No deep cuts necessary.

But here is the reality: Trump knows that he cannot deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, no matter what. Nor can he seal up the border to prevent more from coming. How do we know this? Because he failed to do it during his first term. In fact, his record on stopping illegal migration as president was terrible.

Democrats did a horrible job of explaining this because, of course, we can’t say something clearly for fear of offending somebody. Still, here are some basic facts that I wish we had hung around Trump’s neck all election season. This is not hard to explain, so listen up:

During the Obama presidency, illegal crossings at the Mexican border fell to under 500,000 people per year.

In 2019, when Trump was president, illegal US-Mexico border crossings skyrocketed to 850,000 people. The only reason they fell to below half that the following year was because of COVID. No one was traveling anywhere in 2020. Not you. Not me. Not people crossing the Rio Grande. Everyone stayed home. Unless Trump wants to take credit for COVID, he shouldn’t take credit for the drop in border crossings during his last year in office when everyone was afraid to go outside.

Under Joe Biden, illegal crossings were higher but the thing to note is that they fell 75% this past year. The crisis that Trump ran on is already waning and was on a pretty serious downslope even before he won the election.

So when Trump threatened Mexico with massive tariffs if it didn’t get the situation under control, it was all typical bluster. The situation is already well on its way to being under control. He knows this. All he has to do is wait for his inauguration on January 20th to take credit for it.

I put a marker down on this on CNN the other day. Here’s the clip, which includes my best Lauren Bacall impression due to a horrible case of laryngitis.

Here’s the thing. We import more stuff from Mexico than we export to Mexico. So if Trump want to levy a 25% tariff on Mexican products coming in here, guess who will be paying more? Us. Last year alone, we imported over $400 billion worth of manufactured goods; about $20 billion in agricultural products, forestry and livestock; and about $20 billion from the oil, gas and mining sectors. Many of our cars and car parts, computers, electric equipment, medical instruments and household appliances are made in Mexico.

Here is an easy way to explain all this to your MAGA friends:

Do you like strawberries? Tomatoes? Raspberries? Guacamole? Modelo Especial, which last year dethroned Bud Light as the number one beer in the United States? Most of those end up on your table from Mexico. Chances are, your Dodge RAM might have been manufactured in Mexico, too. So if you voted for Trump because the price of eggs was too high, just wait until Trump slaps those tariffs on Mexican goods coming into the United States.

But wait! We’re the United States of America! We don’t need Mexico growing our tomatoes. We can just grow them here, ourselves. But who is going to harvest those crops? 40% of all farm laborers are undocumented immigrants — you know, the ones whom Trump promises to deport as his first order of business. Between 30% and 50% of all meatpacking workers are undocumented. The United States is pretty much at full employment and most American citizens are reluctant to take these jobs, which offer little professional mobility, even in the worst of economic times. So if Tom Homan personally goes from farm to plant, rounding up undocumented migrants, Trump better have a plan to make sure someone harvests those crops or processes that meat.

If Trump really goes through with the tariffs and the mass deportations, the price of goods, including food produced both abroad and domestically, would skyrocket. So would the price of automobiles, because we imported $130 billion of vehicles from Mexico last year.

You know who would pay more for all these staples? We would — the American consumer.

Yes, yes, I can hear it now: we can build those manufacturing facilities in the United States. Why should we give foreign workers the jobs that belong to Americans, making iconic American products like RAM trucks, iPhones, and sneakers? I am so with you. We should be making Air Jordans in the United States but Nike doesn’t want to do that — because it can pay someone in China, India, Indonesia or Vietnam a fraction of what it would have to pay American workers to make those sneakers here. If Nike were to bring that manufacturing home, it would be passing those costs along to you. Now, as far as I am concerned, these workers should be paid a living wage and belong to a union but I promise that most of the people who voted for Trump won’t want to be paying hundreds of dollars more for a pair of sneakers next Christmas. And unless you think Trump is going to impose — gasp — “price controls” on manufactured goods, pay $300 for Air Jordans you will.

Let’s get real for a moment. You think Trump is really going to force those multinational companies to bring these jobs back to the United States and have them pass along the cost of doing business here to the American consumer? After American voters spent the election complaining about inflation and the price of eggs?

Same goes for oil, which we import from Canada. “Drill, Baby, Drill” has been the mantra for the Republican Party since long before Trump. Except we do drill — and have been drilling more under Biden than we ever did under Trump.

This is also the story that Democrats never communicated properly, for fear of offending environmentalists who want to transition to a green economy. But the truth of the matter is that American oil production spiked under this Administration. On Biden’s watch, the United States produced more crude oil than any other nation in history, including our own. Fossil fuel profits were way up, compared to what they were each year under Trump. You may be shocked to hear that during this first three years in office, Biden actually approved more drilling permits than Trump did.

Still, our appetite for energy is avaricious. That’s why we both import and export billions of dollars in oil, natural gas, clean electricity and uranium to and from Canada. The minute we slap a 25% tariff on those imports, Canada will retaliate. Not only will your car cost more to buy because of these tariffs but it will cost you a fortune to fill up the gas tank. This would all be a positive development to transition to an electric vehicle economy but Trump apparently has plans to eradicate the $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric vehicle purchases, so that’s a nonstarter too.

Again, Trump understands the economics behind this. Unless he is fully intent on driving this nation’s economy into a ditch on purpose (and I don’t think even he is that mendacious), he has two options left:

Option 1: The Mexican Wall Strategy.

Remember how Trump promised to build a wall on the Mexican border and convinced his supporters that Mexico would pay for it? Of course, none of this ever happened. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The former president did build about 500 miles of wall—which is actually a 30-foot fence— across the 2,000-mile southern border. But most of that either replaced sections of existing border fencing (which was shorter) or built a second layer of fencing in areas where some primary fencing already existed. Very few areas got entirely new wall where no previous barrier existed.” Needless to say, Mexico did not pay anything for this little bit of kabuki theater.

(Ask your MAGA friends: if Trump had actually built that wall as he told you he would when he first ran for president, how would we now have all these undocumented migrants flooding the country?)

Under the “Mexican Wall” scenario, Trump would slap a few tariffs on some minuscule products that are of little importance and pretend that he made good on his campaign promise to “punish” our neighbors for their open borders and, in the case of Mexico, for ignoring the fentanyl crisis. It would not surprise me if he worked with Mexico to bust a few minor fentanyl producers and took credit for smashing the cartels. Fentanyl would continue to flood into the United States but both Fox News and the rest of the right-wing echo chamber would never talk about it again. Problem solved, right?

Option 2: The Lazy Option

As I mentioned earlier, border crossings are down 75% already under the Biden Administration. For the first time in years, drug overdose deaths are actually plummeting — by at least 10% this year alone. Experts believe we have turned the corner, especially when it comes to deaths from drugs like fentanyl.

This is great news but something else Democrats did an awful job communicating during the election. Yes, even one death is one too many. But as with inflation and illegal border crossings, the trend is accelerating in a very positive direction. Fewer border crossings. Cheaper eggs. Lower drug overdose deaths. All happening now — under Joe Biden. Why every single Democrat who has access to a television camera or a podcast studio does not talk about this 24/7 is beyond me. (If you see your Trumpy uncle over the holidays, feel free to share this with him. For that matter, if you feel like muttering this while you’re waiting for your barista to make your Frappuccino, you should do that too. The more people who hear it, the better — because we did such a poor job of spreading this news far and wide this cycle.)

As soon as Trump is inaugurated, all he has to do is take credit for Biden’s record and say that Mexico and Canada are working with him to solve the immigration and the drug crises. Just look at the relatively small number of undocumented immigrants trickling in at our borders. Just look at the downward slope of fentanyl overdose deaths.

No tariffs necessary, because the problem has been solved. No need to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants either. Just round up the ones who are already assigned for deportation, plus the criminals who happen to be undocumented, make a big show of throwing them out of the country and call it a day. I promise that Fox won’t be showing anymore ominous caravans heading for our borders right before the next election but they will be showing the Potemkin Village, replete with American troops and ICE patrols, that Trump will call his mass deportation action plan.

To recap: Obama deported more than 1.3 million undocumented immigrants in his first term than Trump did.

Over the last year, Biden deported 700,000 undocumented immigrants — the highest number since 2010. (In case your MAGA uncle accuses you of making up these numbers, please print these statistics out for him, courtesy of Fox News.)

I don’t tout these numbers because I support mass deportation— quite the opposite. But since Trump has presented himself as some tough guy deporter-in-chief, just know that his record in his first term was as shitty as his record in building a border wall and making Mexico pay for it. In other words, it didn’t really happen.

If Democrats weren’t so scared of their own shadows and knew how to actually communicate, this would have been the response anytime Trump opened his mouth to complain about the “illegals” living in this country. But we never build up our own media ecosystem to counter the lies from the other side.

The reason I launched this newsletter and The Salty Briefing on YouTube Channel is to show Democrats how to call out the unmitigated bullshit and start communicating proactively, not just prophylactically.

There will be a lot of bullshit to come in the next four years. Get vigilant. Get the facts. Get back in the game.

Odds and Ends:

God Save Us from Our Own Democratic Leaders

Democrats cut the worst deal ever on judges recently, which I wrote about earlier. But I delved into it at the Salty Briefing on my YouTube channel some more, because there is so much more to how betrayed we should all feel about it. Check it out below.

There’s more where that came from.

Also, check out my video response to Marton’s Blotter, who sent in a fantastic comment about how now is not the time for Democrats to play nicely in the sandbox. I thought that was a really interesting point and expanded upon it in the paid section below.

For paying subscribers, please keep sending those comments/question and I will be sure to answer each and every one of them as quickly as I can, just as soon as this laryngitis finally clears up. I wish I could open up every part of this newsletter for free to everyone, but I do spend hours on it every day, including on researching the data that helps us to communicate more authentically and directly, so I hope that if you have a few dollars to spare, you might consider an annual or a monthly subscription.