AUSTIN, Texas — In the days before and since his inauguration, President Donald Trump has made lots of promises on immigration.
“All illegal entry will immediately be halted and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” Trump said.
Joshua Blank is the research director of the Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
“With respect to immigration, the president is seeking to deport many undocumented immigrates from the country as soon as possible, and ultimately have deport them to other countries,” said Blank.
But not all those other countries are ready to take them back, so the president is ready to try to put the pressure on, Blank said.
“The president has made clear if there are countries we do want to deport undocumented immigrants to, and [they] do not want to accept those immigrants, one of the first things he will do is levy a tariff on that country,” he said.
That’s exactly what happened in Colombia, where President Gustavo Petro initially blocked flights with deportees from landing in his country. But with President Trump threatening a 25% tariff on Colombian goods and other restrictions on Colombians coming to the U.S., President Petro relented.
“[Tariffs] make every product they export to the United States cost more [in the U.S.], and therefore decrease demand in those products,” said Blank. “That’s going to be a direct economic hit to those countries, even if they don’t pay the cost of the tariffs.”
The cost of tariffs, Blank said, also impact U.S. residents.
“[They] will be paid by us consumers in the form of higher prices,” he said.
That would have included products such as Colombian coffee and cut flowers.
But with Colombian tariffs off the table, American consumers won’t have to worry about paying up – at least for now.
On Monday, Mexico’s president announced that country has accepted more than 4,000 deportees since Inauguration Day. She suggested that other Central American countries could reach agreements with the U.S. to accept deportees from other countries.