As it turns out, we were sitting across the table from Mexico's chief negotiator for the North American Free Trade Agreement when news officially broke on Thursday that the United States would impose new tariffs on steel and aluminum from Mexico, Canada and the European Union.

Without missing a beat, Kenneth Smith Ramos said that Mexico would respond. And he said, referring to the underlying rationale used to justify the tariffs, that Mexico is not a security threat to the United States.

By the end of the day, Ramos was proven right as Mexico announced its own retaliatory tariffs, including on agricultural products such as pork, fruit and cheese. We'll note that agricultural is actually one area in which the U.S. runs a trade surplus with other countries. So the fallout from these tariffs will likely be a larger trade deficit for the United States.

But beyond trade deficits, there is a larger issue at stake in this fight. To get around asking Congress to impose tariffs, President Donald Trump invoked a provision of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 that allows him to block imports that threaten our national security.

We doubt these tariffs are about national security. But it is worth saying that Trump's Defense Secretary, James Mattis, has gone so far as to send a memo to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross stating that "U.S. military requirements for steel and aluminum each only represent about three percent of U.S. production." To us, that says tariffs on steel and aluminum are not needed to protect national security.

We'd go further to argue that one way to strengthen American security is to bolster our economy. And getting into a trade war with key NAFTA and European partners will undercut our economic prospects.

For example, in 2017 Texas alone had $97.3 billion in exports to Mexico. Over 350,000 jobs in Texas depend on trade with our southern neighbor. The NAFTA talks currently underway also include adding energy to the trade deal, something Texas would benefit from. The United States currently runs a $11.5 billion trade surplus in energy with Mexico. All that with just one NAFTA partner.

No trade deal is perfect, and the United States should press to renegotiate agreements from time to time. However, succeeding at those talks requires a modicum of sophistication.

Ramos' purview is limited to NAFTA, but across the table from us he sketched out a few facts Americans should consider in this broader debate. He noted Mexico is currently engaged in a parallel process to find ways to expand trade with Canada, the European Union and a host of countries in South America and Asia.

The world isn't standing still, and our trading partners will build relationships with other countries that offer businesses a more stable trading environment. The United States holds a lot of cards, but it needs to play its hand well to win at trade.

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