Tariffs, Midterms, and NAFTA’s Ghost

Editorial by Paco Baca.

Trump’s trade war with Canada is not just about lobsters and lumber — it’s about ballots. With midterms looming, Republicans in border states juggle tariffs like grenades, hoping not to blow up their own campaigns. Susan Collins in Maine watches her lobsters priced out of reach, while Democrats sharpen their knives, ready to carve Senate seats out of Republican flesh.

But behind the circus, the ghost of NAFTA hovers. The renegotiations that once promised “fair trade” now look like vanity projects, leaving Mexico in a paradoxical position: a country battered by tariffs yet holding leverage as the indispensable link in North America’s supply chain. Factories in Michigan and Ohio know it — their trucks cross south daily, proving Mexico’s industrial weight is no longer negotiable.

WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!

Trump, ever the ringmaster, declares: “WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!” Yet the stage tells another story: Canada retaliates, Mexico recalculates, and voters in the Midwest wonder why their jobs are the collateral damage of a trade war staged for applause.

The cartoon today says it all: a TRADE WAR doghouse against the fence, a collar in the grass, and the Bowl of America with the bone still in it. The dog is not in the picture. The war is. In this North American drama, the peso still counts.