Colombia backed Trump down, got him to accept their demands
...I just heard the erstwhile republican Michael Cohen make a misinformed defense of Colombia's response to Trump's recklessly destructive tariff threats.
He starts out saying that Trump should have asked them nicely to accept refugees. That's nowhere near the issue or the problem. Colombia, like all refugee origin countries, have always accepted returned migrants.
The problem Colombia's president had was that Trump changed the civilian flights - which all presidents have used, even Barack Obama in his return of the most refugees in U.S. history - into military transport with deported individuals accused of nothing more than entering the U.S. illegally (a civil offense, not a criminal one) returned in handcuffs like criminals.
The reported 'deal' which Trump and Colombia arranged ahead of the lucrative Valentine's Day holiday, and in view of the threatened price inflation of the flowers Colombia sends to our florists and stores to the tune of $1 billion in revenue- achieved agreement on their offer of using a 'presidential plane' for the refugees, and acceded to the Colombian president's demand they not be treated like criminals on their return.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, in defiance of Trump, had ordered Colombian officials to turn away military planes carrying deported migrants, and asserted that they should be returned, as it had been done in the past, on civilian flights.
"I can't force migrants to stay in a country where they're not wanted, but that country should return them with dignity and respect toward them and also our country," Petro wrote on Twitter.
The Executive flex from Trump to his republican supporters' complaints that immigrants are 'costing us jobs' and 'hurting the economy' was to slap tariffs on Colombia for reusing to receive their countryfolk, delivered by our military to their nation in shackles.
But the fight Trump started with Colombia had the real possibility of making goods from Colombia more expensive to American consumers.
It would hurt coffee shops, flower shops and other distributors, marketers, and sellers of coffee in the U.S. eventually costing jobs at those businesses here at home, essentially making Americans suffer for his zeal and inability to achieve what he wants on immigration legislatively. The U.S. is Colombia's largest trading partner, so this blackmail of Trump's was potentially destructive all around.
"There was a win-win here. The United States withdrew the threat of tariffs and Colombia was able to get the United States to accept that the treatment given to our citizens should be dignified," Colombia's ambassador to the U.S., Daniel Garcia-Pena told local television channel Caracol.
All Trump achieved with this stunt was to aggravate prices and threaten Americans in a reckless zeal to punish migrants. It should be hard to imagine that all of this bungling arrogance was supposed to be in our interest, especially considering all of the squawking he did in the campaign over high grocery prices and his promise to bring inflation down on his first day.
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