Avocados are hardly the only thing that would feel the bite if Trump closes the border

The United States will run out of avocado within weeks if President Trump closes the border with Mexico. Photo / 123RF

President Donald Trump threatened to close the U.S.-Mexico border this week if Mexico did not stop all undocumented immigrants from coming into the United States. The United States and Mexico do cooperate already in addressing Central American migration, and, in any event, Mexico cannot stop every undocumented migrant from entering the United States. In practice, Trump's threat would mean shutting down ports of entry, which would stop legal migrants and commerce from coming into the United States from Mexico.

Mexico is the United States' third largest trading partner, and over $1 billion in trade goods cross the U.S.-Mexico border every day. But those numbers can seem large and abstract, and so many a media outlet wrote about a more tangible example: the United States would run out of avocados in a matter of weeks if Trump does indeed close the southern border.

But how effective is focusing on one fruit?

Far from trivialising a potential bilateral trade crisis, some experts say that focusing on the avocado helps drive home the impact Trump's decision would have on American readers.

"The avocado story is not a new one - it comes up all the time with Mexico trade issues," William Reinsch, who holds the Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in an email.

"It's a handy shorthand way of illustrating how an abstract issue like international trade actually affects people's lives day by day ... it gets people to understand the interconnectedness of the global marketplace and demonstrates the benefits of globalization. Without it, we'd have to go back to putting butter on our toast!," added Reinsch, who was previously president of the National Foreign Trade Council.

"I think it's a good example. We need to make U.S.-Mexico trade and trade policy and border management tangible," agreed Christopher Wilson, deputy director of the Wilson Center's Mexico Institute.

That said, there are downsides of framing even the economic angle of the U.S.-Mexico border around avocados. For one thing, "Of course there is way more to the US-Mexico economic relationship - there's way more at stake in shutting down the border than just avocados," Wilson said. "Sometimes you just have to let the numbers speak for themselves. Sometimes it's not a perfect little anecdote that encapsulates everything."

Trump has threatened to close the US-Mexico border this week if Mexico doesn't stop all undocumented immigrants from coming into the US. Photo / AP

That's especially true since, while Mexico's the United States' third largest trade partner, it's the second destination for exports, said Jorge Guajardo, Mexico's former ambassador to China. "The U.S. imports much more from China than to Mexico," he told The Washington Post, but it "exports more to Mexico than China, Japan, and Korea combined," and much of that is in the form of agricultural products. Farmers will feel a closed border, Guajardo argued, especially because Trump's already in a trade standoff with China.

"Here's the thing: Whether he goes through or not with this nonsense of closing the border, if nothing else, he's emboldening the Chinese in their negotiation," Guajardo said.

For another, statistics like these - how quickly U.S. consumers would feel the pressure of a border closure when they go to make breakfast - only capture one part of the U.S.-Mexican economic relationship. Roughly half of the trade is comprised of whole products that are sold from one country to another. But the other rough half is of trade is trade in intermediate parts. According to Wilson, over $100 billion in parts come into the United States every year to "keep our factories running." While avocados could run out in a matter of weeks, factories, he said, would feel the hit of a border closing in two to three days.

Another potential downside of focusing on avocados is that Trump is framing the issue in terms of security, not economics, Heather Hurlburt, director of the New Models of Policy Change Program at New America, wrote in an email, just as some of his opponents are against his policies not because of guacamole, but on humanitarian grounds. In addition to threatening to close the border, Trump decided to stop sending aid to the Central American countries from which people are fleeing in the first place.

"By claiming that there is a crisis at the border - and maneuvering how they house and treat migrants so that there appears to be one - the President is activating his supporters to believe that the security situation is so dire it justifies suffering economic consequences," she wrote

"If the stakes are either crime and violence directed against American citizens, as Trump often and erroneously says (since we know immigrants commit fewer crimes on average than the native-born) OR the human suffering of families sleeping on gravel in underpasses because of this Administration's choices, worrying about avocados seems rather silly either way."

Although Trump is making his argument on security grounds, the reality is that there will be an economic element to a border closure, Wilson said. So it's an argument that should be made to the U.S. public, in addition to, but not instead of, a conversation on migration, he said.

"I actually think that the economic argument to not shut down ports of entry is an incredibly powerful one. I'm not at all uncomfortable making that argument," he said.

And Mexico cooperates with the United States on security because of the economic benefits of the relationship, said Guajardo, now a senior director at McLarty Associates.

"It's not as if Mexico gains much by helping the United States on security issues," he said. "It's not necessarily where immigrants want to emigrate to. Nevertheless, Mexico cooperates with the United States because we recognize that we have an economic partnership."

"If you start with this nonsense of closing the border, there's no longer an argument," he said.

Which brings us back to avocados.

"[The] spectre of trucks of rotting avocados is not a bad metaphor for what happens to a host of US industries if you shut down border crossings," conceded Hurlburt, who worked in President Bill Clinton's White House and State Department.