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The One Thing Republicans Can’t Agree On

8 1
03.12.2024

The GOP is already fighting about just how far to go with Trump’s draconian vision for immigration.

Even with control of the House and Senate, Republicans willstill have to fight tooth and nail to actually pass the majority of president-elect Trump’s immigration platform, a huge part of his campaign.

MAGA Republicans and more moderate Republicans currently disagree about how cruel they should be regarding the southern border. “We’re going to need a little time to figure out what shakes out,” said the more moderate Texas republican Tony Gonzalez. “What does a conference in the House want? What does the conference in the Senate want? What does President Trump want? And then that’s when we have a short window to be able to jam that all through.”

Even more troubling for Republicans is that Trump loyalists like Jim Jordan want to slide the most extreme parts of Trump’s immigration plan into the reconciliation package, which could violate the budgetary rules that moderate Republicans prefer to abide by. Jordan said that he wants the Remain in Mexico policy—which requires migrants seeking asylum to remain outside of the U.S. while their claims are processed—to be included in this.

“We get sworn in on Jan. 3,” Jordan said. “We should pass H.R. 2 as a stand alone bill or [break] it up into pieces — I’m open to either one — but pass all of that to show that we’re ready to go. Then see what parts of it … can be put into reconciliation.”This conflict is set to define the earliest days of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Donald Trump’s tariffs will likely take the biggest toll on Texas, multiple economics experts told Newsweek.

Last week, the president-elect announced plans to impose 25 percent tariffs on all goods imported from China, Canada, and Mexico “until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!”

While Trump’s tariffs on Mexico are expected to cause consumer prices to soar for a number of imported products, they would have far wider adverse effects on the U.S. economy. Specifically, they will make life tough in Texas, where a majority of the residents voted for the tariff-touting incoming president.

Ray Perryman, the CEO of the financial analysis firm The Perryman Group, told Newsweek that the negative effects of Trump’s tariffs will likely hurt the Lone Star State the most “because of its proximity to and integration of supply chains with Mexico.”

“Texas would see a disproportionate impact, which we estimate to be about $46.9 billion in yearly gross state product (about 1.7 percent of the total) and approximately 370,000 jobs,” Perryman said.

Perryman warned that, if implemented, 25 percent tariffs on all goods from Mexico and Canada would result in an estimated loss of $250.6 billion in annual national GDP and approximately 1.97 million jobs, amounting to nearly one percent of the U.S. GDP.

Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told Newsweek that he agreed that the proposed tariffs would “severely impact” Texas.

“Not only all those avocados, mangos, beer, tequila etc. becoming more expensive to Texas consumers, but the decline in cross-border truck and rail traffic will throw a lot of Texans out of work,” he said. “Then there is the loss of Texas sales of consumer goods, cattle, gas, petroleum and electricity to Mexico. Thrown in a decline in Mexican tourism in Texas.”

Tony Payan, the director for the Center for the U.S. and Mexico at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, told the Texas Standard that the “stakes could be high for both Texas and Mexico” when it came to Trump’s proposed tariffs.

“The amount of trade between the two countries is $800 billion a year. Half of that—$400 billion—is essentially what we could call intra firm trade,” Payan said. “That is, trade that occurs between manufacturing firms—the parts that come from Mexico or come from the United States into Mexico to complete the cars and to complete the goods that are traded.”

Payan added that he wasn’t sure Trump would “make good” on his promise to impose tariffs and ultimately he believed the president-elect would realize just how “integrated” the two economies had become.

Maxwell Marlow, director of research at the Adam Smith Institute, voiced similar concerns to Newsweek, explaining that Trump’s tariffs would “be particularly devastating for areas such as Texas, where goods cross borders multiple times during their production.”

Marlow added that the U.S. should expect retaliatory tariffs from Mexico, which would also disproportionately hurt Texas.

Part of why retaliatory tariffs would be so damaging is because Mexico receives a whopping 29 percent of Texas’s exports, Professor Dennis Jansen, head of the economics department at Texas A&M University, explained to Newsweek.

“If there is retaliation from abroad—say if Mexico follows through on the threat to raise tariffs on goods exported from the U.S. to Mexico—this will further reduce the demand for Texas (and overall U.S.) exports,” Jansen said.

With nationwide abortion access off the table thanks to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Republican Party is setting its sights on a new civil rights target: recriminalizing gay marriage.

The sentiment is apparently popular enough amongst those on the right that Michigan state Representative Josh Schriver unwarily shared his........

© New Republic


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