Clarity needed here, there on Trump’s Mexico strategy

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly were in Mexico City on Thursday with a difficult task: trying to mend fences with our southern neighbor when their boss wants to build a real fence.

According to reports, the U.S. officials got an earful. Mexican Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong and Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray told them of Mexico’s displeasure with President Trump’s plans to increase deportations to Mexico, including residents of nations other than Mexico. Kelly offered private and public assurances that the U.S. had no intention to launch mass deportations. On the record, Tillerson downplayed differences, saying the two nations needed to “modernize and strengthen our trade and energy relationship.”

But this came just hours after Trump met with manufacturing CEOs, bragging about his immigration crackdown “getting really bad dudes out of this country and at a rate that nobody has ever seen before” and calling the present U.S. trade relationship with Mexico “unsustainable” because of the United States’ annual “$70 billion” trade deficit with its NAFTA partner (actually $58 billion, according to the most recent official U.S. data).

Thursday’s events could be an illustration of what columnist Charles Krauthammer describes as a “good-cop, bad-cop” approach — Trump being belligerent and his high-ranking subordinates being conciliatory — which Krauthammer thinks “perhaps” could be effective.

But when you live in a region so helped by strong ties to Mexico, what the Trump administration is doing doesn’t feel like a coherent strategy. It feels inconsistent, more like mockery. An NPR analysis of Thursday’s events said Mexico was looking for “clarity” out of the Trump administration. Many of us in San Diego and the U.S. want the same thing.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: UTOpinion