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🇦🇷 Argentina /Economy & Trade

Trump on Mexico: “It has nothing the US really needs, except spicy tamales and tomatoes”

From La Nación · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Documents & data Context piece
  • Donald Trump said Mexico has little that the United States “really needs,” citing spicy tamales, tomatoes and a few other items while criticizing the bilateral trade deficit.
  • He said the United States could stop trading with Mexico but did not want to do so because he had a good relationship with President Claudia Sheinbaum.
  • Official data show Mexico was the United States’ largest partner in goods and services trade in 2025, with major flows in computers, vehicles, auto parts, electrical equipment and medical instruments.

Donald Trump said Mexico has nothing the United States “really needs” apart from “spicy tamales, tomatoes and a couple of things,” using the Oval Office remarks to defend his criticism of the bilateral trade deficit.

“If I stopped trading with them, we wouldn’t lose anything. It would only take one signature,” Trump told reporters, according to a transcript published by Infobae. He put the annual US loss linked to trade with Mexico at $195 billion and repeated that Mexico had nothing the United States really needed.

If I stopped trading with them, we wouldn’t lose anything. It would only take one signature.

· Donald TrumpTrump argued that the United States could end trade with Mexico without suffering a loss.

The figure is close to, but not exactly the same as, the official goods balance. Data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau show a $196.9 billion US goods deficit with Mexico in 2025. That measure reflects the fact that US imports from Mexico exceeded exports to Mexico. It does not, by itself, represent a direct economic loss.

They have nothing that we really need.

· Donald TrumpTrump dismissed the importance of Mexican goods while discussing the trade deficit.

Trump also said he did not intend to halt trade with Mexico. “I don’t want to do that because we get along very well with the president,” he said of Sheinbaum, whom he said he respected. His comments combined criticism of the deficit with a political signal that the bilateral relationship would continue.

The trade relationship extends far beyond tomatoes and other farm products. Mexico was the United States’ largest trading partner in goods and services in 2025, with total trade of $976.1 billion, according to an updated Congressional Research Service report. US imports from Mexico included $90.8 billion in computers, $84.4 billion in vehicles, $67.3 billion in auto parts, $30 billion in electrical equipment and $14.7 billion in medical instruments. Agricultural products make up only a fraction of a relationship dominated by manufacturing and industrial components.

I don’t want to do that because we get along very well with the president.

· Donald TrumpTrump said he did not want to end trade with Mexico and referred to Claudia Sheinbaum.
About this summary

Originally published by La Nación in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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