Business leaders are growing concerned about President Donald Trump's new executive order that, in effect, wages a war against the Mexican drug cartels and how it could impact their companies.
Politico explained in a Wednesday report that the administration has designated several major Mexican cartels as "foreign terrorist organizations," putting them in the same category as groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS. This classification allows for the deployment of military, intelligence, and law enforcement tools to dismantle cartel operations more aggressively.
In April, Trump's administration went so far as to advocate the use of drones to strike key areas of the cartels and conduct intelligence.
Last week, Trump secretly signed a directive authorizing the Pentagon to use military force against specific Latin American drug trafficking organizations. It's an escalation of past efforts by the U.S., which has largely used local and federal law enforcement against such networks.
However, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum reassured citizens on Friday that the U.S. is not putting boots on the ground in their country.
“The United States is not going to come to Mexico with their military,” she said in a news conference. “We cooperate, we collaborate, but there will be no invasion. It’s off the table, absolutely off the table.”
All of it rattles international corporations and businesses, which fear not only escalating violence and destabilizing the region, but there is also an economic impact.
"Trump’s move means a company in Mexico that engages in a financial transaction with a cartel could face new U.S. sanctions or criminal charges of providing material support for terrorism," Politico said. "Given the vast reach of the cartels, which have expanded beyond drugs to become more like multinational conglomerates, odds are high that firms here occasionally brush against such networks, even unwittingly."
"They’re worried," said one top Chamber of Commerce official, Pedro Casas Alatriste. “Let’s say they have one of their workers get kidnapped, and they have to negotiate in a way that touches organized crime — then they’re susceptible."
