Mexico girds for tariffs, migrant deportations after Trump win

Donald Trump’s electoral victory has left Mexico bracing for potential trade tensions, tariffs and mass migrant deportations that experts say could pose a major test of relations between the closely connected neighbours. On the eve of the election, Trump vowed to impose tariffs of at least 25 per cent on goods coming from Mexico unless it stops an “onslaught of criminals and drugs.” The Latin American nation “has to take what Trump says seriously” given his past actions such as building a border fence, said Pamela Starr, an expert on US-Mexican relations at the University of Southern California. At the same time, “Trump likes to negotiate from a position of strength, which means he tends to use coercive rhetoric to lay out an extreme position from which he can negotiate down,” she told AFP.