The government shutdown is entering its second week, and it looks like Trump is starting to realize what a weak position he is in. The public is blaming him for the shutdown and a majority of them don't want his wall, and the Democrats are showing no signs of giving in on supplying more border wall money. Next week, he gets even weaker as the Democrat seize control of the House of Representatives.
So what does Trump do? He threatens to completely close down the border with Mexico if the Democrats don't give him the money he wants. Could he be serious? Does he not realize that its not just cars and foot traffic that cross the border each day (and even if it was, that would seriously hurt border states like Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California -- who make a lot of money off cross-border traffic).
But it's more serious than that. Here's how New York Magazine puts it:
His latest tweets confirm that he has, in fact, been threatening to end (virtually) all commerce between the U.S. and Mexico, our nation’s third-largest trading partner. Upward of $30 billion worth of goods are shipped across the U.S. southern border on a monthly basis; interrupting that flow of goods for any significant period of time would paralyze major corporate supply chains, drive countless small businesses into insolvency, and terrorize global markets with the specter of American autarky.
This is supposed to put pressure on congressional Democrats, but it won't. First, they will probably view this as another empty Trump threat. Even if he is stupid enough to do it, surely someone in the White House will talk him out of it. Second, if Trump does shut down the border it will seriously disrupt the U.S. economy (and combined with the Trump tariffs could hasten a recession). The Democrats won't be blamed for that -- Trump will.
Trump has come up with a lot of crazy ideas since being sworn in, but this may be the craziest of them all.
