Professor Matt Gold joined Audie Cornish and Jim Zarroli on NPR’s, All Things Considered, to discuss the impact of the latest tariff’s imposed on Mexico by the Trump administration.
ZARROLI: Yeah, I was wondering that, too. And I put the question to Matt Gold, who was a trade official in the Obama administration. And he said Trump probably does have the authority to do this. Congress has delegated to the president the power to impose certain temporary tariffs, but Gold says this is almost certainly a violation of international law.
MATT GOLD: We’re definitely violating both the World Trade Organization agreements that we have with Mexico and the NAFTA agreement that we’re having with Mexico in very, very major ways with very, very scary long-term potential impact.
ZARROLI: And Gold says the U.S. may have some legitimate issues about immigration, but tariffs aren’t the way to deal with it. It’s better to deal with it through some diplomatic channels, only, he says, Trump at this point just doesn’t have that much credibility with the Mexican government.
GOLD: Any previous American president, Republican or Democrat, would have had a good enough relationship with the Mexican government to be able to solve this problem without such a dramatic and self-damaging measure.