The enduring asymmetry: How American commercial necessity and Mexican historical fear define North American trade

“ The people of the United States are the logical exploiters of the Western Hemisphere—the children of destiny for one half the world. They are pressed by economic necessity. They need the oil of Mexico, the coffee of Brazil, the beef of Argentine, the iron of Chile, the sugar of Cuba, the tobacco of Porto Rico, the hemp of Yucatan, the wheat and timber of Canada. In exchange for these commodities the United States is prepared to ship manufactured products. ”

“ Foreign commerce is a necessity of our large and redundant agricultural production. Our extended sea-coast, and necessarily large coasting-trade between the States, have begotten an unbounded spirit of maritime adventure. ”

“ The commerce of the United States is essential, if not to their existence, at least to their comfort, their growth, prosperity, and happiness. The genius, character, and habits of the people are highly commercial. Their cities have been formed and exist upon commerce. Our agriculture, fisheries, arts, and manufactures are connected with and depend upon it. In short, commerce has made this country what it is, and it can not be destroyed or neglected without involving the people in poverty and distress. Great numbers are directly and solely supported by navigation. ”

“ The fact needs to be reiterated that the people of the United States were largely dependent upon agriculture and other forms of extractive industry, and that markets for the disposal of their goods were an absolute necessity. Some of the States, especially New England and the Middle States, were interested in the carrying trade, but all were concerned in obtaining markets. On account of jealousy interstate trade continued a precarious existence and by no means sufficed to dispose of the surplus products, so that foreign markets were necessary. ”

“ In considering the importance of Mexican-American relations from the point of view of the United States the economic motives are less important in themselves than the consequences that might follow the lack of good understanding. The Mexican import and export trade is of great and growing importance to the United States, as has already been shown. Mexico is a schooling ground for American importers and exporters. The experience acquired in the foreign market near at hand is valuable in the approach to others more distant. ”

“ That the Government and people of the United States should do all that can be reasonably asked of them to dispel the idea or suspicion, that now prevails throughout Mexico and all Central America, that the North Americans desire and intend, at no distant day, to take possession of all these countries, and destroy their present nationality. So long as this suspicion exists, the influence of the United States in Mexico and Central America, will be based to a great degree on apprehension, rather than liking. ”

“ Unfortunately, we do not need to recur to foreign histories; a rich part of our territory has become the prey of the United States. . . . Hence, we should always fear the United States. We have seen that a hundred leagues of railroad from here to Vera Cruz have given such influence to the English company that many times this very influence has been sufficient to decide the votes of the chamber, and shall we be so insane as to consent to the establishment of an American company which will embrace the whole country. ”

“ We have said enough to show the capabilities of Mexico as a slaveholding country; and of the desire of American slaveholders to push their industrial system into countries adapted to it, there are, unfortunately, but too many proofs. They are prompted by the love of power and the love of wealth to obtain possession of Mexico, and the energy that is ever displayed by them when pursuing a favorite object will not allow us to doubt what the end of the contest upon which the United States are about to enter must be. ”

“ Most of this large amount of gold is gathered from washing the sand and loose earth, and not from deep mines; and as it is every year becoming greater and greater, it must add immensely to the wealth and resources of the Russian empire.
But by far the greatest gold-field in the world, has been opened by the discoveries of the last few years in California. At the close of the late war with Mexico, the United States acquired, by conquest and purchase, a tract of country of some five hundred thousand square miles in extent, known as the Mexican territory of upper California. ”

“ Lower California must at some time inevitably be a territory of the United States. It is a peculiarity of the Yankee race that, like the western farmer, they only want to possess “all the land that joins them;” and this country, isolated as it is from Mexico, inhabited by a people who heartily hate the institutions of their{172} mother country, neglected by her, and lying in such close contiguity to our possessions on the Pacific coast, must fall into our hands, and, instead of being a worthless territory, we should find it our greatest acquisition on the Pacific. ”

“ During all these years, the United States was unhappily the bulwark of the exploiting interests. The Mexican people feared American intervention more than anything else and this fear kept them from revolution. And the colossal grants and subsidies for railroads, mines, oil, gold, silver, copper and land, judiciously distributed, identified the United States' State Department, the Senate, tie press, and the people of the United States with Diaz no matter what his outrages might be. ”

“ One thing that cannot be overemphasized is that a healthy and expanding Mexican economy is in the interest of the United States. We want Mexico to grow and prosper. And that's why we've done our best and will continue to do our best to help find solutions to the vexing problems of Mexico's international debt. Innovative, market-based methods of managing this burden are being explored, such as Mexico's offer to exchange debt for long-term bonds. ”

“ In time Mexico and the United States also should see it, and demand that government and business cooperate and that Mexico and the United States be mutually helpful.
We have no right to strike down the governments of Mexico one after another and refuse to the government and people financial, business, and political assistance.
The only assistance the people of Mexico have had from the United States has been business assistance in railroad, mining, and oil development. ”

“ More is involved than the immediate destinies of Mexico and the relations of the United States with a distressed and distracted people. All America looks on. Test is now being made of us whether we be sincere lovers of popular liberty or not and are indeed to be trusted to respect national sovereignty among our weaker neighbors. We have undertaken these many years to play big brother to the republics of this hemisphere. ”

“ The country she has called upon the most heavily for capital in the past has been the United States. The revolution has increased the necessity of that dependence. Mexico must borrow to repair the destruction of the revolution; she must seek an intensive development of her national resources in order to secure means for paying off her increased obligations and for improving the social and industrial life of her people. ”

“ This fear serves no other purpose than to keep large capitals from our soil, which employed in Mexican enterprises would give an impulse and new life to agriculture, to mining, and to a multitude of industries which could be developed in our country, and, besides being irreconcilable to our national pride, also make us appear in the eyes of our next neighbors as a cowardly people which doubts its own vitality, the manliness of its sons, and which seeks safety in the recourse of all weaklings against danger, namely, in flight, instead of fighting danger bravely ”

“ There will not be wanting some who will ask you why we have provided men and money to establish a regular government in Mexico. In the present state of civilization of the world the prosperity of America is not indifferent to Europe, for she it is who feeds our manufactures and keeps our commerce alive. It is to our interest that the Republic of the United States may be powerful and prosperous, but by no means that she should take all the Gulf of Mexico and hence command the West Indies as well as South America, and be the sole dispenser of the products of the New World. ”

“ In the first place, it is exactly the policy which Great Britain now offers to Mexico. Can the United States afford to bid less for the trade of the American Continent than her great commercial rival? Again, Mexico wants, or is likely to want, everything which the United States especially desires to sell, and the only drawback to a great extension of trade between the two countries is the lack of ability on the part of Mexico to pay for what she wants. ”

“ Europe is therefore the market of America, as America is the market of Europe; and maritime commerce is no less necessary to enable the inhabitants of the United States to transport their raw materials to the ports of Europe, than it is to enable us to supply them with our manufactured produce. The United States were therefore necessarily reduced to the alternative of increasing the business of other maritime nations to a great extent, if they had themselves declined to enter into commerce, as the Spaniards of Mexico have hitherto done ”

“ What our national industries need and all they need, what they always needed and all they ever will need, is a quick market for their products; products in market is the only market for products; but the United States for 30 years past has been putting vast obstacles in the shape of formidable taxation in the way of the presence of products from abroad in our domestic market, and consequently [140] and inexorably the market for domestic products has been lost in foreign countries, to the immense and irreparable damage of domestic producers as well as to the foreign producers themselves. ”

“ Both the inability and the policy of foreign powers, then, forbid us to rely upon the foreign market, as being an adequate vent for the surplus produce of American labor. Now let us see if this general reasoning is not fortified and confirmed by the actual experience of this country. If the foreign market may be safely relied upon, as furnishing an adequate demand for our surplus produce, then the official documents will show a progressive increase, from year to year, in the exports of our native produce, in a proportion equal to that which I have suggested. ”

“ We must speedily adopt a genuine American policy. Still cherishing the foreign market, let us create also a home market, to give further scope to the consumption of the produce of American industry. Let us counteract the policy of foreigners, and withdraw the support which we now give to their industry, and stimulate that of our own country. It should be a prominent object with wise legislators, to multiply the vocations and extend the business of society as far as it can be done, by the protection of our interests at home, against the injurious effects of foreign legislation. ”

“ One need not fear that the returns will be uninviting, for Europe would hardly have been supplying credit and capital to Latin America as a mere matter of amiability. Thus our capital must regenerate Latin-American prosperity, while our bankers, merchants, and manufacturers are engaged in making solid, permanent arrangements, not opportunistic ones, to take possession of a great share in the present and still more in the growing future development and commerce of these countries. ”

“ We shall not be permitted by our own financiers, manufacturers and merchants, to say nothing of those of Europe, to hold completely aloof. We have seen, even in the present Mexican crisis, how American investment tended to precipitate a conflict. We have learned the same lesson from England, {71} France and Germany. As we expand both industrially and financially beyond our political borders we are placed in new, difficult and complicated international relations, and are forced to determine for ourselves the rôle that America must play in this great development. ”

“ Such, in brief, is the history of the movement which has resulted in the titanic struggle for the few remaining open markets of the world. Falling prices and reduced profits mean increase of production, which in turn require new markets. We in the United States had been careful to secure the home market to ourselves, but in this crisis the home market proved sadly inadequate. Our manufacturers must needs go forth and compete with European wages and standards of living for the markets of the world.
The story of their success is one of the romances of industry and trade. ”

“ The earth is thirsting for the cup of good will, understanding is its fountain source. I would like to acclaim an era of good feeling amid dependable prosperity and all the blessings which attend.
It has been proved again and again that we cannot, while throwing our markets open to the world, maintain American standards of living and opportunity, and hold our industrial eminence in such unequal competition. There is a luring fallacy in the theory of banished barriers of trade, but preserved American standards require our higher production costs to be reflected in our tariffs on imports. ”

“ Moreover, the war by destroying established connections between neutral countries and their natural purveyors of manufactured goods in Europe has opened the way to a future extension of American export. Like a protective tariff, it gives an initial advantage to Americans, and helps them to overcome the early handicaps. It induces American manufacturers to think in terms of foreign markets instead of concentrating their attention upon a protected home market. ”

“ There are few in either country who realize the importance of Mexican-American relations to both countries. American relations will always be the chief element in Mexican foreign policy. That is a fundamental fact, no matter how unwelcome to certain classes in Mexico. Circumstances beyond the control of any government, the geographical position of the country, and the character of its natural resources make it so. ”

“ I profoundly hope that the Mexican nation may soon resume the path of order, prosperity, and progress. To that nation in its sore troubles, the sympathetic friendship of the United States has been demonstrated to a high degree. There were in Mexico at the beginning of the revolution some thirty or forty thousand American citizens engaged in enterprises contributing greatly to the prosperity of that Republic and also benefiting the important trade between the two countries. The investment of American capital in Mexico has been estimated at $1,000,000,000. ”

“ The lessons of progress and enterprise were then taught that are bursting the long, lethargic sleep of indolence, bigotry, superstition, and arrogance that had bound it since the conquest by Cortez, and Mexico is now awaking to a new life; her powers and capabilities expanding; her government more secure than ever before; religious freedom is gaining ground; education has received a new impetus; railroads and telegraphs are being built; and she will soon take prominent position in the family of nations.
Now, let us look at the territory acquired by the United States by that war. ”

“ Even commerce, to which so much fear regarding our neighbors is attributed, should only see a reason for congratulation if American capital comes to this country to impart life and activity to our market, which is almost stagnant for lack of circulation of money. And if, notwithstanding the lessons of the past, the pessimists should be right, and the American enterprise were not entirely free from danger to us, why in the world have we not confidence enough in ourselves to face such danger, instead of running away from it? ”

“ We exhibited there a great many things manufactured in the United States, with the prices at which they were sold in the United States, and the prices at which they were sold outside of the United States, marked on them. If you tell a woman that she can buy a sewing machine for eighteen dollars in Mexico that she has to pay thirty dollars for in the United States, she will not heed it or she will forget it unless you take her and show her the machine with the price marked on it. ”

“ Accordingly, the German and English merchants in Mexico take in exchange for such wares as they desire to sell, and at a certain price, whatever the Mexicans have to offer of their products. The American merchant, on the other hand, finding that the commercial policy of his country is based on the assumption that such a system of exchanges is not desirable, and that its existing laws make reciprocal trade difficult, does not seem even to attempt it. ”

“ The commercial relations between the United States and Mexico, now complicated and restricted by mutual antagonistic tariff legislation, might easily be so readjusted and broadened as to secure continued peace and amity between the people of the two nations, and greatly extend the volume and the profits of their international commerce. ”

“ By this table, covering the commerce between the United States and Mexico for nineteen years, we observe that from having a trade worth, in imports and exports, about nineteen millions and a half, in 1835, it is now reduced, in years undisturbed by war or the results of war, to not more than two millions and a half or three millions. As commerce usually regulates itself, in spite of personal or national prejudices, this fact is doubtless attributable to the lower rates at which European manufacturers and producers are enabled to afford their merchandise in the Mexican market. ”

“ Those who wish a resumption of orderly development in Mexico cannot overlook the part that foreign commerce played in the old régime in placing the country on its feet, giving work to the people, and resources to the government to carry out the progressive measures it supported. They should not forget to what degree that commerce was made possible through the United States market and the enterprise of Americans who came to the republic with their capital. ”

“ I want the best solution also for Mexico. I do not just want a great solution for the United States. And what I am talking about is not a good solution for Mexico – it is a great solution for the United States, which is a tariff on everything coming into our country. Now, that is the best solution economically for the United States, but I feel very strongly that it is important that as our neighbor, we have a strong relationship – the stronger the better. ”