On Wednesday, April 9, the Albuquerque Consulate of Mexico and four University of New Mexico faculty members held a public meeting to discuss and answer questions about the tariffs recently implemented by President Donald Trump.
Earlier this month, Trump paused tariffs on nearly 60 countries, but imposed 145% tariffs on products from China, according to the New York Times. In the simplest form, tariffs are taxes on goods that come from other countries, Reilly White, a UNM associate professor of finance, told the Daily Lobo in March.
Event coordinator and law professor Paul Figueroa believes that tariffs will raise government revenue, but he finds “less empirical evidence” to substantiate the idea that the tariffs will save money for the average consumer, he said.
Figueroa also highlighted the agreements of the World Trade Organization system, which serve as an essential structure for bilateral trading, he said. These rules and regulations are decided by each partnership, and thereby countries are obligated to adhere to them, according to Figueroa.
“If the United States is successful in cutting bilateral deals with many countries, it completely undermines the W.T. rule system. Every country will basically have ‘rules-a-la-carte,’” Figueroa said.
Manuel Montoya, a professor of global political economy and cultural economics, described Trump’s endgame as “hyper-short term.”
“We live in a world where rationality changes in real time, because we memorialize everything in real time, we historicize everything in real time,” Montoya said. “Political cycles now are dependent upon instant gratification of the moment and how that moment can be defined … The rationality of these tariffs is not grounded in economic logic, it’s grounded in its ability to perform some element of urgency that people will pay attention to.”
Although the outcomes of the tariffs are unclear now, Consul of Mexico Patricia Pinzón Sánchez recalled a similar situation in 2019 when Trump threatened a 25% tariff on Mexican imports, but it was voided after negotiation.
UNM political science professor Wendy Hansen highlighted the complexity of the language around tariffs, and said that even within her own profession, she has difficulty keeping up with the news.
“It’s complicated, and it’s hard for the average person to keep a grasp of what's going on because you have to know a lot of the terminology that's being thrown around,” Hansen said. “I teach a class on government regulation and public policy, and literally I can say something one day and I have to come in the next day and say, ‘Well, that's no longer true.’”
Lexis Lovato is a freelance reporter with the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on X @lovatolexis
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