NYT Blasted for 'Insane' Take on Terrorist Designation of Cartels

Social media users did a double take this week on a New York Times headline reacting to President Trump’s recent executive order designating certain cartels as global terrorists and foreign terrorist organizations.

“The Cartels have engaged in a campaign of violence and terror throughout the Western Hemisphere that has not only destabilized countries with significant importance for our national interests but also flooded the United States with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs,” the EO notes.

“The Cartels functionally control, through a campaign of assassination, terror, rape, and brute force nearly all illegal traffic across the southern border of the United States,” the order continues. “In certain portions of Mexico, they function as quasi-governmental entities, controlling nearly all aspects of society. The Cartels’ activities threaten the safety of the American people, the security of the United States, and the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere. Their activities, proximity to, and incursions into the physical territory of the United States pose an unacceptable national security risk to the United States.”

But the Times is concerned about the economic effects of the designations.

President Trump’s executive order designating Mexican cartels and other criminal organizations as foreign terrorists could force some American companies to forgo doing business in Mexico rather than risk U.S. sanctions, according to former government officials and analysts — an outcome that could have a major effect on both countries given their deep economic interdependence. [...]
[D]isentangling cartel operations from U.S. interests in Mexico could be immensely complicated. Mexico is the United States’ largest trade partner of goods, and many American companies have manufacturing operations there.
Even more complicated, these criminal networks have extended their operations far beyond drug trafficking and human smuggling. They are now embedded in a wide swath of the legal economy, from avocado farming to the country’s billion-dollar tourism industry, making it hard to be absolutely sure that American companies are isolated from cartel activities.
“This has come up in previous administrations across the political spectrum and from members of Congress who have wanted to do it,” said Samantha Sultoon, a senior adviser on sanctions policy and threat finance in the Trump and Biden administrations.
“But no one has done it because they have looked at what the implications would be on trade, economic and financial relationships between Mexico and the United States,” she added. “They have all come away thinking that such a designation would actually be super shortsighted and ill-considered, though prior administrations viewed the U.S.-Mexico relationship far differently than the incoming Trump administration appears to.”
The foreign terrorist designation could lead to severe penalties — including substantial fines, asset seizures and criminal charges — on companies and individuals found to be paying ransom or extortion payments. U.S. companies could also be ensnared by standard payments made to Mexican companies that a cartel controls without the American companies’ knowledge. (NYT)

NY Times: “How Labeling Cartels ‘Terrorists’ Could Hurt the US Economy.”@nayibbukele, President of El Salvador: ‘They tried to tell me arresting criminals would destroy our economy but instead it helped the economy.’

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— Joshua Hartley (@JHartley2) January 22, 2025