If Trump shuts Mexico border US will run out of avocados in three weeks

My goodness, the two great enemies of Identitarians. They need to boycott all coffee now in protest.

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Imagine hating non-white people so much that you’d be willing to alter the earth’s axis just so you wouldn’t have to do business with them anymore.

Ooh, wait! I see a portion of Australia’s Northern Territory that produces the life-giving caffeine! Let’s just hope that it’s not one of those areas where Aboriginal Australians still have a say in running things.

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I’ve noticed a huge difference in the quality of avocados since I moved from L.A. to Washington. They’re just bland and mealy most of the time, compared to what I got in California - which, to be fair, had probably been picked like 5 minutes earlier.

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Obviously it’s true that nativist yahoos will have to give up low-low Walmart prices. I really can’t defend Walmart prices or the Walmart business model or what Walmart has done to American towns and workers. They rely on low tariff imports from China, SNAP payments to unemployed Americans, and subsidized healthcare for their workers, all the while destroying independent businesses and making their owners very very wealthy. There’s nothing for me to defend in that.
I have been many times to the ethnostate of Israel. Things are not cheap there. The Israeli ag, hospitality, and construction industries would LOVE to have access to Arab labor. But they don’t. The retail industry would love to have access to cheap imports, but they don’t. They have a ridiculous tariff on imported electronics, cars, and fuel, so people don’t buy much of those things. It’s not easy, and you might say, why not allow Israel to be flooded with cheap imported stuff, but they value things other than money and cheap consumer goods.

Just gonna throw this out there… you don’t “solve” the perceived negatives of a global trade infrastructure on your own country by unilaterally cutting off trade with other countries first. That’s a bit like saying “we need to finish building the roller coaster” when the ride is at the top of the lift hill. Shutting the southern border or turning away container ships full of Chinese-manufactured goods will not cause an entire nation’s worth of agricultural and manufacturing infrastructure to spontaneously manifest overnight. To say nothing of the agricultural impossibility of nationalizing production of every foodstuff we consume; a lot of stuff simply does not grow and cannot be made to grow at scale in the climates available within the lower 48.

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The “ethnostate”* of Israel does use non-citizen Arab labour, in just the manner you’d expect. Israeli consumers have had the entire postwar era and then some to come to terms with the fact that life would be more expensive for them if they wanted to exist as a nation-state. Americans foolish enough to want an ethnostate have spent that same period enjoying relatively low consumer prices, especially once their moneyCon allies started union-busting and cutting workplace safety standards domestically.

When Mexico starts lobbing rocket attacks over the border on a regular basis or conducts suicide bombings in the U.S. in the name of the reconquista you can talk about Israel’s Likud programme becoming a policy model for the U.S. and other Western countries. Otherwise you’ll just have to wait for Israel’s very unusual and unique situation to resemble the norm in North America and Europe rather than wasting everyone’s time pushing for the reverse.

[* scare quotes because that was not the original Labour and “political” Zionist ideals (both of which embraced internationalism) but rather the product of right-wingers in Likud pandering to their Identitarian and religious fundie Nativist yahoo allies and – to be fair – Israel’s neighbouring ultra-nationalist and religious fundie Nativist yahoo enemies. If Israel is an “ethnostate”, it’s by the choice of some domestic bigots and by necessity caused by some foreign bigots.

This takes us off-topic, so create another topic if you want to debate it (I don’t – just characterising your “just so” description of Israel as fallacious and ill-informed)]

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Never again.

We’ll burn everything and everyone to the fucking ground before going back to being slaves.

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Come on, now, it’s not about slavery. It’s just about bringing back the good old days of Jim Crow, where people knew their place in a discriminatory and xenophobic ethnostate.

See also Rhodesia and apartheid-era South Africa. See also (to a lesser degree) Germany during the heyday of the gastarbeiter. For all the talk of ethnic purity by their proponents, ethnostates always rely on migrant labour or second-class citizens to do the dirtiest of jobs at the lowest wages.

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Let’s be clear on the title of this post … rich and powerful people will still manage to have avocados.

It is the rest of us that will not be able to afford $80 avocados.

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They’ll finally be able to afford houses!

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I didn’t see Oz when you posted that, I was too taken with Yemen and wondering what Yemeni coffee will be like (when they stop the slaughter and displacement there).

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There is so much wrong with this post that it’s going to be challenging to unpack it all.

Aside from the strongly implied racism of your post, let’s look at it point by point:

  1. Mexico is a very large market for American cars. Mexico purchases roughly 1.5 M new cars per year, of which over 70% are imported, and 80% of those imported cars are from the US. Mexico also exports cars to the US, in roughly equal numbers. The value of the exchange appears to be a trade deficit, but that’s because cars are more expensive in the US than in Mexico.
  2. Mexico is a HUGE supplier of auto parts and components for US auto manufacturers and plants located in the US. Shutting down the border would also shut down most US automotive plants, as almost every finished car made in the US has parts sourced from Mexico.
  3. You’ve obviously never been to an auto plant or auto parts plant in Mexico. I have. It was pristine. It was located on an estuary that feeds into the Gulf of California and had facilities that cleaned the river water contaminated with agricultural runoff for the plant’s use. The plant released used water cleaner than what it took in.
  4. I managed products produced in Mexico. Our cost basis there was lower than on the US west coast but similar if not higher than in the US Southeast. The workers at that plant made a little more than US minimum wage, which was still a good deal for the company because they had particular expertise. We shifted manufacturing of some parts there because of the plant’s expertise, not because it was cheaper.
  5. The working conditions at that plant were comparable if not better than at similar US plants. The safety stats were better than one plant I had visibility to, but that plant had an inherently more risky manufacturing process.
  6. As mentioned above, if you really want to support American workers and American manufacturing, don’t cut off critical components without which American plants will shut down and American workers will get laid off.
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Such as? Be specific, and stay on-topic by highlighting the ones that should also be valued by Americans more than avocados or job-creating international supply chains.

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Again, you have obviously never been to Mexico or talked with an actual Mexican. They do not dislike America or Americans. That’s just plain bullshit. By your reasoning, Brits must harbor resentment against Americans for that whole 1776 kerfluffle, and likewise Canadians still miffed about 1812. :roll_eyes:

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They are splendid in how horrible they are. I find them kind of fascinating looking through google images. I understand trends come and go. But some of these I just can’t get into the thought process where this is not just good but good enough to publish recipe’s and photos for time immortal.

My tired eyes red that as Venn sausage diagram. I need coffee…

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Now is probably a good time to reiterate that no group is a monolith which all thinks & acts exactly the same.

Implying (or outright stating) that 100% of any nationality or ethnic group harbors negative feelings towards another is not only bigoted as fuck, it’s also highly likely to be some serious psychological projection.

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Or, put another way:

Do not make assumptions as to anyone’s mental state, race, gender, ethnicity, religious beliefs, group affiliation or sexual orientation without corroboration.

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Saying or implying “all Mexicans hate America/Americans” as if that’s a fact and not a skewed personal opinion is right up there with saying “all Black people are lazy thieves” and “all Jewish people are greedy misers who control the world:” They are racist ideas that try to ‘justify’ mindlessly hateful behavior against the people being persecuted.

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That’s not how isolationism works. Thanks not how any of this works. Making common cause with white nationalists is an extremely bad strategy. The scorpion’s nature does not change.

Well everything’s okay then. :roll_eyes:

Your wording is perilously close to xenophobic.

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