For decades, American trade policy rested on a simple assumption: if manufacturing moved to wherever labor was cheapest, everyone would benefit.
Consumers would get lower prices, companies would earn higher profits, and globalization would make the world more stable.
That theory collapsed.
The pandemic exposed fragile supply chains. China weaponized its manufacturing dominance. Washington finally realized that trade policy and national security are inseparable.
President Trump understood this before most policymakers. Tariffs on China, the replacement of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), and efforts to bring manufacturing home were never just economic policies. They were national security policies.
A New Realism Outside the Beltway
But confronting China was only the first step.
The next phase of America First should be about building a stronger North American economy that can outperform China without trying to imitate it.
That idea is gaining support beyond Washington, including in Mexico.
Alejandro Martínez Araiza, National General Secretary of SNAC, Mexico’s oldest private-sector union, recently testified during the USMCA review process before officials from the U.S. Trade Representative’s office and the Departments of State, Treasury, and Labor.
His message deserves serious consideration. “You do not defeat China by trying to be China,” he argues. “The United States needs a reliable neighbor with shared values.”
He’s right.
China’s advantage was never just cheap labor.
Beijing combined state subsidies, intellectual property theft, control of critical minerals, industrial planning, and an enormous manufacturing base to build geopolitical leverage over the global economy.
Power of the North American Bloc
America doesn’t need to imitate state-directed capitalism. We already possess a far superior economic ecosystem.
America provides innovation, capital, advanced research, and the world’s largest consumer market.
Canada supplies energy and critical minerals.
Mexico has become America’s largest trading partner and a manufacturing powerhouse in automobiles, electronics, agriculture, and industrial production.
Together, the three USMCA partners account for nearly one-third of global GDP. No other democratic region has comparable economic potential.
Yet geography alone will not guarantee victory.
Martínez Araiza argues that North America cannot build a lasting competitive advantage by relying on permanently low Mexican wages.
Workers earning subsistence pay don’t become homeowners, investors, or consumers. Weak wages fuel migration, suppress domestic demand, and create instability that inevitably reaches America’s border.
“There is no fair trade on poverty wages,” he says.
Some conservatives may instinctively dismiss that as labor-union rhetoric. They shouldn’t.
One of President Trump’s central trade objectives was ending the race to the bottom that rewarded companies for chasing the world’s cheapest labor. USMCA wasn’t designed simply to preserve continental trade.
It was designed to encourage higher-value manufacturing in North America instead of exporting jobs and industrial capacity to geopolitical rivals.
That’s an America First objective.
The Next Industrial Revolution
Martínez Araiza also raises an important question about artificial intelligence.
While most policymakers focus on productivity, he warns that AI could become the next wave of economic displacement if workers never share in the value created by automation. His proposal for a “Technological Dividend” may or may not be the right answer, but the underlying question deserves attention.
Who benefits from the next industrial revolution?
America has answered similar questions before.
The interstate highway system wasn’t simply transportation policy. It strengthened national defense and commerce. The GI Bill wasn’t just an education program. It helped create the largest middle class in history.
USMCA deserves to be viewed the same way, not simply as a trade agreement, but as strategic infrastructure.
Economic Security Is National Security
If North America can secure critical supply chains, expand advanced manufacturing, and reduce dependence on China, the agreement becomes far more than an economic pact.
It becomes one of America’s greatest geopolitical advantages.
China’s strength comes from scale. America’s strength has always come from innovation, free enterprise, trusted alliances, and democratic institutions.
No alliance is more important economically than the one already sharing this continent.
America First should never mean America alone.
A stronger Mexico doesn’t weaken the United States if that strength expands North American manufacturing, reduces illegal migration, secures supply chains, and limits China’s influence.
Those outcomes serve American workers and American national security.
Martínez Araiza often says that a secure border begins with a Mexican worker who can build a good life at home instead of feeling compelled to leave it. That isn’t charity. It’s strategy.
President Trump correctly recognized that trade policy is national security policy.
The next step is recognizing that America’s greatest competitive advantage isn’t simply beating China. It’s building a North American economic alliance strong enough that China can’t catch up.
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