Canada and Mexico
You can't pull back
from your own block.
With most of the world, the question is how far to pull back. With Canada and Mexico there's nothing to pull back from — we're wired together, permanently. The only thing to change is the terms. And the danger here isn't doing too little. It's reaching too far.
These aren't trading partners. They're one machine.
Roughly $900 billion in goods crosses the Canadian border each year, and about the same with Mexico. A lot of the oil American refineries are built to run comes from Canada — over four million barrels a day. You can't “leave” that any more than you can leave the house next door. The work is to renegotiate the terms, not to walk away from them.
Crossings just hit their lowest level since 1970.
Border crossings have fallen off a cliff — from 2.2 million in 2022 to about 237,000, the lowest in over fifty years. The single biggest reason is Mexico stepping up its own enforcement. That cuts both ways: the thing that helped most is something a neighbor chose to do, and could choose to undo. Which is exactly why you work with them, not against them.
People stopped at the southern border, a year
The lowest in over half a century — and the biggest driver was a neighbor's own choice.
Don't start a war next door over a problem you can negotiate.
There's loose talk of sending the military to hit targets inside Mexico over the drug trade. Mexico's president answered it plainly: it's not going to happen. She's right that it shouldn't. A real problem doesn't justify starting a war with a neighbor we're permanently bound to and could press through every other means first.
The rule on your own block is the same as everywhere else: change the deal by talking, keep what you owe, and never reach for force you didn't have to.