IT’S still too early to say what effect the election of Donald Trump as the next US President will have on America’s relations with its neighbours, from borderline Mexico to Cuba, or from Jamaica to Saint Lucia and Guyana in the English-speaking CARICOM region.
Mexicans are scared stiff that a President Trump will build that promised wall, engage in mass expulsion of illegal Mexicans across the border and stop Mexicans in the USA from sending money home (to force Mexico to pay for his wall).
Mexico’s dilemma, however, is that it needs its citizens in the USA.
Mexicans comprise 17% of the total US population and approximately 80% of Mexico’s exports go across the border to the USA. Mexico also has more than 5 million citizens living across the border without papers, comprising about half of all undocumented US migrants.
Mexicans in the USA – legal and illegal — are important to their country’s foreign exchange earnings, sending home more than US $20 billion in remittances wired from America up to September 2016.
Mexicans were so wary of a Trump victory that during the final days of the campaign, the peso upped and dropped in value like a yo-yo, according to Trump’s polled chances – and it actually dropped 13% Wednesday morning after Trump secured his victory.
But the Mexican government isn’t waiting until Trump takes office on January 20 to find out what he’ll do. It’s already bracing itself – and assuring the world that it’s ready for any fallout.
Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade and Bank of Mexico Governor Agustin Carstens, addressed the decline in the value of the peso Wednesday, following Trump’s election hours earlier and said Mexico is ready for any eventuality.
Meade said, “The result of the election in the USA does not imply an immediate impact on the regulatory framework that regulates trade in goods and services, nor in financial flows.”
“Additionally,” he added, “Mexico is in a position of strength to face the new environment.”
Central Bank Governor Carstens took a similar line, adding that Mexico also has “a privileged position with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that will permit Mexico to cope with any future crisis.”
Trump has said nothing either about his position on US trade ties with Brazil, or his plans for the future of recent openings for more US trade with Cuba under the outgoing Obama administration.
But long before his surprise election victory, Brazil, Cuba and Mexico had started taking steps to consolidate their business, trade, economic, cultural and political ties with their closest neighbours in the Wider Caribbean area.
A Brazilian business pivot to the smaller English-speaking Eastern Caribbean islands is currently under way in Saint Lucia, just as Cuba and Mexico are also looking to both CARICOM, OECS and the other states in the Wider Caribbean region.
Cuba hosted the 34th Havana International Trade Fair from October 31 to November 4, which was attended by delegations from all six OECS member-states (Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines).
The Brazil-OECS Business Forum here will start before and run alongside a similar mission mounted by Mexico, starting next week.
Mexico will host the 2016 Business Forum entitled “Creating Synergies to Strengthen the Competitiveness of the Greater Caribbean” from November 16 to 18, at the Peninsula Convention Center in Cancun.
The Mexican embassy says it is “the most important business forum in the Greater Caribbean” and “is designed to foster regional economic development and competitiveness by increasing trade and investment flows.”
By the time the Greater Caribbean investors start their business talks in Cancun, the Brazilians in Saint Lucia will have ended their Business Forum.
And by the time the November 16-18 Cancun Forum is over, Saint Lucia and the rest of the region should have a better understanding of why the latest regime change in Washington will require even stronger efforts to build, renew and strengthen South-South business ties in the Trump era.
DRAW A LINE ARCHING FROM THE YUCATAN Peninsula to Cuba Haiti South to Jamaica East to Antigua South to Trininida and Venezuela or perhaps east south east to Bahia Brazil.D Declare a free trade zone and mutual protection treaty that seals all sea channels between island nations. The French and Dutch will need to cooperate.
Declare a tariff to enter this modified Caribbean Sea to transit Panama Canal, fishing for all non friendly nations………………Looks like Trumpmay be all alone in that category.
Will Russia resume Kruschev era geopolitical chess exercises and field lethal naval assets in this neutral zone?
Putin was schooled in the Kruschev era and has an after taste of the USSR empire that would usher him a GODHEAD in the pantheon of Russin legends if he can wrest world influence from NATO.
I am not so much worried about the geriatric lame duck wheeled into the oval office as much as I am about the highly skilled (ex KGB chief), muscular, fit as a fiddle Putin who has demonstrated his ability for annexation with impunity and the protection of Russian airspace with 0 tolerance.
The berthing of the largest war submarine ever built in its most eastern Siberian naval base (Think next door to Alaska) within 2 months of the election, is rather ominous indeed. No one has speculated on how many ICBM;s this end game monstrosity is packing
Grandpa Trump may have taken us back to the Cold War era but Putin can assure us of the landscape of Flintstones era …..
Mirage,
Your true “reactionary” colours are showing! Is that all you can muster? A reprise of the “Monroe Doctrine”?
Shouldn’t you, instead, have drawn a time-line for the “Monroe Doctrine”, and listed its deleterious effects on the Western Hemisphere till now?
The Monroe Doctrine made the US king of the entire Western Hemisphere.
My proposal creates a new grandiose Caribbean fraternity for economic empowerment for all the nations that border the Caribbean Sea.
Smart juxtaposition of the SINGULARITY of the Monroe Doctrine onto the PLURALISM envisioned in my Caribbean Free Trade and Mutual protection Treaty.
Nevertheless, your certificate from the Nazi Gymnasium of Propoganda GLOWS radiantly 🙁
Seig Heil
Ober Dietrich
MAJOR ADDENDUM
http://osnetdaily.com/2015/09/russia-sends-worlds-largest-submarine-with-200-nukes-to-syria/
My initial read on this sub deployment via local sources were as quoted above but in researching for this writing I came upon the above.
If this link is factual then we may as well read and pray.
Do note that there has been recent missile attacks on US naval vessels. Attacks alleged to be Iranian (pal of Russia and Syria) sponsored off the coast of Yemen.
And now enter the geriatric president to fiddle on the Red Button of total response .
Mirage,
Your conclusions on the sub deployment are rather piddling – akin to idle gossip.
The failed Clinton presidential campaign had been on a 24×7 rant to link Russia to Trump, but now you want to raise the alarm about Russian nuclear subs from an article issued at the beginning of September, this year?
Pray tell us THE TRUTH about the Debkafile, the source of the ALLEGED “missile attacks on US naval vessels” that were ALLEGEDLY Iranian-sponsored.
No wonder the global stock markets fell so sharply on wednesday following the reincarnated Bush like shock and awe stupor of Tuesday.
A build up to a potential Armageddon is a curious factor at the very least……and grandpa is at the wheel………….
The “cognitive dissonance” – it burns the “brain” (being extremely kind today) of Mirage!
If, Trump and Putin were really linked at the hip, then the potential for Armageddon has been greatly reduced while “grandpa is at the wheel”!
Since the global stock markets are rigged thoroughly, one can infer that the sharp blip was induced to punish small, naïve investors for voting against Clinton, the psychopath who never relinquished the threat of Armageddon from her arsenal, and was the choice of private, global financiers.
Earl,
You will acknowledge that your opening phrase, “IT’S still too early to say what effect the election of Donald Trump as the next US President will have on America’s relations with its neighbours…” makes your entire opinion piece irrelevant, especially since you sneakily implicate “the election of Donald Trump” as the “causative agent”.
Will you stop already with these “logical fallacies”?
So you ADMIT to the rigging of the Rothchild Central banking network…….for MAINTAING the World Economic Order….wherein 3 % control ALL else!!!!!!!
AND you Nudge SUPPORT / adore TRUMP & CHASTENET
sworn disciples and now aristocratic political agents for this devilish scheme against humanity via the administration of IMF /World Bank cartel.
Yet law enforcement targets the Colombian and Mexican renegade cartels exclusively.
Perhaps Cuba will bring the IMF/World bank legal cartels to the World Court at the Hague ……for crimes against humanity………
Nudge, your virtual profile is shaping up with rather OMINOUS features on the canvas of reality
Donald Trump has embarked on destroying the world, making the fears about Trade and immigration of little significants.
The day Americans followed the example of the people of this country and elected another ignorant White Supremacists to be their leader. Trump is Chastanet magnified in trillions, and doesn’t think Global Warming is a problem. He intends to burn as much fossil fuels as he is able to extract from the ground, so the Lucian people can say bye to Castries as the polar ice caps melts and dissappears, turning our beaches and coastal cities into submarines.
Nudge/
-NOT joined at the hips- but rather the psychoanalytic metaphor of the TOTEM POLE.
I meant that the hyper gonads of Putin has risen atop the totem pole of geopolitical influence. This means that Mystical Russian Bear -a cross between the determined cold callous self serving marauding intensity of a hungry adult male Polar Bear and the indiscriminate ruthlessness of an angry adult male Grizzly bear; is dominant over the de facto recessive Paper Tiger of the geriatric Playground bully-Trump.
The tenseness along the brittle demarcation of the pre World War era of geopolitics of the world order was shattered by a planned assassination of an Eastern European
monarch.
Millions of ILL EQUIPPED Russians were slaughtered in that first preliminary trials for Armageddon. The russians licked their wounds but their psyche thirsted for punitive redemption…n’est pas.
The second round of preliminary trials for Armageddon had similar triggers that initiated the global carnage of human slaughter but this time around the seeds of scientific thought from captured german scientists gave birth to both the space age and the Atomic weapons of global mass destruction.
These twin realities are evident in the sophistication of our current deployment of INTER CONTINENTAL BALLISTIC MISSILEs (ICBM’s)
One can argue that Russia and the US have negotiated nuclear proliferation traties reducing their stockpiles BUT at the current levels and increasing technological advances for rapid cloaked deployment the status quo for for averting DOOMSDAY remains
-ASSURED MUTUAL DESTRUCTION!
And now the stage is again set in even tenser brittle lines of geopolitical division.
The growling hybrid Russian Bear described earlier is ever mindful of the devastation incurred in WW1 and WW11. However, the geopolitical vista is even more volatile and the lines of demarcation more splinters or not clearly defined. For instance we have North Korea a frightful international “court jester” mimic the monarchs of nuclear destruction deployed by long range missiles.
China has a fully functional Space exploration NASA and a knockoff copy of every strategic weapon in both the US and Russian arsenals ……
The Russians have advanced from a static SUPPLIER of weapons to allied regimes to active participation in close support in the actual theaters of live warfare.
Should the sane not worry about a “trigger to calamity”? Remembering full well the simple “inescapable” triggers that preceded the domino effect resulting in the mass human butcheries of WW1 & WW2.
But NUDGE with an IQ of 1 million 🙂 wants to sell us Trump/ Chastenet pills to numb and dumb us down to impotency.
Hey, why not serve us the JIM JONES koolaid while in your acolyte role to the silver spooned aristocrats 🙁
Seig Heil
OberFuhrer Dietrich
determined to insulate themselves with a buffer
PS 4 Nudge/
I enjoyed the proverbial proof of the pudding delivered by OberLootenanat-Fuhrer Guy Joseph as he and his Gestapo minions descended on a warehouse with WARRANT in hand.
Only in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia did functional Ministers of Government participate in the traditional roles of the local CONSTABULARY!
It is an illegal breach of the separation of powers but a great tactical vehicle to deliver the propaganda of political intimidation….n’est pas/
Nudge you supported this nazi -right wing extremist manipulation of power….. yet you call me out for not being a left wing REACTIONARY??????
BY-the BY
Cher Nudge,
I shall analyze your preoccupation with singling out Earl.
Is that part an parcel of the Reichstag leader’s plan for journalists that he is not comfy about?
Is your role “Literary LAtrine” for the frequently constipated aristocrats? Their greed and too rich diets revolve around suspicious anxiety over the free expressions of the 4th estate…..n’est pas?
In that case my Thanksgiving Day gift to you is a freighter size container of CHARMING….that is toilet tissue to you-
Nudge no expression of thanks needed. I consider it pro bono public service .