By R. Cort Kirkwood
Now competing for the most embarrassing journalistic enterprise of the new year — along with the most galactically stupid one — is an offering from The New York Times.
The Times’ crack reporters have reckoned that President Donald Trump’s designating the drug cartels that control the southwest border as “terrorist” might harm the U.S. economy.
The reason:
Isolating U.S. companies from cartel activities could be almost impossible given that the criminal groups operate in sectors like agriculture and tourism, leaving some American businesses vulnerable to sanctions.
As well, as the reporters noted three times, the cartel-infested avocado trade could be in big trouble.
Maybe. But stopping the cartels, Mexico’s permission regardless, might just save some of the almost 100,000 American lives lost to fentanyl overdoses annually, not to mention those addicted to methamphetamine.
Trump designated the cartels as terrorists in an executive order on his first day in office.
Citing “former government officials and analysts,” the Times complained that the terror label
could force some American companies to forgo doing business in Mexico rather than risk U.S. sanctions … an outcome that could have a major effect on both countries given their deep economic interdependence.
The Times admitted that Trump wants to pressure Mexico to “rein in its dangerous drug trade.” But the problem is this: “Disentangling cartel operations from U.S. interests in Mexico could be immensely complicated. Mexico is the United States’ largest trade partner of goods, and many American companies have manufacturing operations there.”
Even worse, the cartels operate in legitimate businesses such as tourism and growing avocados. That would make isolating American companies from the cartels quite difficult.
And, of course, the Times’ reporters might just worry that attacking the cartels could affect their supply of avocados…
Remarkably, the Times did not contact Homan or anyone else to explain the pro-terrorist designation and why it’s imperative for U.S. national security.
Nor did the Times report that U.S. border agents seized 856,000 pounds of illegal drugs at the Southwest border from fiscal 2022 through December. Of that, 463,000 pounds were methamphetamine and 66,000 pounds were fentanyl…
But as one X user noted, the Times might have another reason other than its obsession with bashing Trump for attacking his order: Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire.
Slim rescued it from financial disaster with a massive loan in 2009.
In 2015, the Mexican telecom tycoon became the newspaper’s largest shareholder. He sold half of those shares in 2017.
Read the rest here: https://thenewamerican.com/us/nyt-designating-cartels-as-terrorists-could-hurt-u-s-economy-avocado-trade-in-big-trouble/
