Mexico should be rich. It shares a 2,000-mile land border with the largest consumer market on earth, coastlines on two oceans, abundant natural resources, and a young workforce. Prosperity should have arrived decades ago.

The industrial boom did. Mexico is now America’s largest trading partner for the third consecutive year, selling the United States $534 billion in goods in 2025. It has become a major manufacturing power, and the nearshoring wave that followed the trade war with Beijing made it one of the world’s most sought-after industrial destinations.

‘We are not applying to be the world’s next sweatshop. We are applying to be America’s trusted factory floor.’

But too little of that prosperity reached the people doing the work. For decades, Mexico’s biggest export was not cars or electronics. It was Mexicans: More than 12 million now live abroad, most of them in the United States. A thriving country does not export its own children by accident.

Alejandro Martínez Araiza, national general secretary of the National Trade Union for Food and Commerce, Mexico’s oldest private-sector union, has an explanation economists rarely say out loud.

“Cheap labor was never an accident. It was the design,” Martínez Araiza told me. “Investment came for the low wage, and the system was built to guarantee the wage stayed low. Protection unions were the lock on the door. Corruption was the guard. The worker was never meant to prosper, because his poverty was the product being sold.”

That diagnosis is relevant today because the old design now stands between North America and its goal of competing more effectively with China. Martínez Araiza is candid about the scale of the challenge: China still dwarfs Mexico in manufacturing output.

“Can Mexico replace China? In volume, never, and anyone who promises otherwise is selling you something,” Martínez Araiza said. “You do not defeat China by trying to be China. You defeat it by being the neighbor China can never be: next door, with shared interests, and rules you can actually verify. We are not applying to be the world’s next sweatshop. We are applying to be America’s trusted factory floor.”

That is why he treats labor enforcement as supply-chain security. A real factory with real workers, better wages, and an independent union able to walk the floor is harder to disguise as a front company. In his formulation, labor enforcement becomes a certificate of origin that paperwork alone cannot fake.

His proposals for the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement review follow from there: automatic consequences for violations, enforcement covering warehouses and logistics as well as factories, a regional wage floor of $7.25 an hour, and a verification alliance of democratic worker organizations across all three countries.

RELATED: Meet the man making Mexico useful again

Daniel Cardenas/Anadolu/Getty Images

Martínez Araiza is equally candid about Mexico’s vulnerability. More than 80% of Mexican exports go to the United States.

“China can survive a trade war with America. Mexico cannot, and I will not pretend otherwise,” he told me. “That is exactly why Mexico’s only rational strategy is a USMCA so credible and so enforceable that no one ever needs a trade war. Certainty is the cheapest stimulus that exists.”

Then comes the part Washington rarely considers. Mexico maintains trade agreements with about 50 countries. “Everyone talks about Mexico as somebody’s back door,” Martínez Araiza said. “I want the opposite: Mexico as America’s front door. Build it together in North America, and sell it to the world through our agreements. Close the back door. Open the front door. Made in North America, sold to the world.”

When work pays, people stay. “Pay a real wage, and Mexico’s biggest export goes back to being products, not people,” he says. Border security, in his telling, begins on the payroll.

American readers may be skeptical of a Mexican union leader offering trade advice. But the incentives line up. His program raises the cost of the labor arbitrage that moved American factories south while reducing one of the pressures that drives migration north. President Trump’s trade agenda seeks both outcomes.

Martínez Araiza proposes to pursue them with something the American taxpayer does not have to create: organized workers already inside the supply chain, using secret-ballot elections and replacing the old protection-union system workplace by workplace.

The design that kept Mexico poor is breaking. The question is whether North America can replace it with something that lets workers, manufacturers, and both countries prosper together.

“There is no fair trade on poverty wages,” Martínez Araiza said. “The best tariff is a good wage.”

​China, Investment, Mexico, North america, Opinion & analysis, Trade war, Usmca, Wages, Border security, Manufacturing, Alejandro martinez araiza, Donald trump, Tariffs, Economy 

Ontario officials are cracking down on American alcohol so aggressively that even a grocery store display of California wine sparked a government response after a citizen tipped off local media.

“We were alerted to this by a viewer who said a store in Kemptville had set up a full display in the front of the beer and wine section, prominently selling wine from California,” CTV News anchor Dylan Dyson reported.

“I saw the wine on display this morning, and within hours of contacting Loblaw, the dusty U.S. bottles were pulled from the shelves once again.

“When CTV News reached out to Loblaw, the parent company of the independent grocer chain, it said the wine was put on the shelves without the approval of the store owner,” he continued.

“And once identified, it was removed immediately,” he added.

“I don’t know why they would do it,” one resident told cameras in response to the store having American wine on their shelves.

Ontario’s minister of finance responded as well, saying, “We have been clear — US alcohol will remain off shelves. We expect all retailers, including this grocer, to follow the rules.”

According to the CTV News Ottawa report, the incident helped in “reigniting shoppers’ patriotism amid trade tensions with Donald Trump and the United States.”

“If these Canadians hate us so much, why not boycott all 30,000 American businesses that dominate your craphole country? You know why they won’t?” BlazeTV host Pat Gray asks.

“Because they can’t. They’re far too dependent on us to actually put their money where their inflated egos are,” he adds.

Gray notes that Canada is also dependent on the U.S. for protection.

“No more NORAD either. How about we just remove our protective shield from you guys?” he asks. “We’ll just let you figure out how to defend yourselves for a change.”

Want more from Pat Gray?

To enjoy more of Pat’s biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Alcohol, California, Canada, Ctv news, Donald trump, Local media, Ontario, Pat gray, Wine, Blazetv show 

The Florida Department of Transportation has ordered all Flock cameras and other license plate readers to be shut down by law enforcement agencies.

A release from the department said that the “recent exponential increase” in plate-reading devices forced the agency to intervene in order to preserve Floridians’ “sovereignty and quality of life.”

‘It’s really none of the government’s damn business if you’re doing that.’

A nationwide campaign has arisen by citizens accusing Flock cameras of violating their privacy rights by tracking their movements.

Supporters of the camera network say the data is invaluable to law enforcement investigations and privacy concerns are overwrought.

Among those opposed to the cameras is Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who recently criticized the technology over privacy concerns.

“They claim that the companies aren’t going to misuse it, but no one’s watching that,” the governor said in Jacksonville on Monday. “And I know you can make some money selling cameras, but you really can make a lot of money if you can sell people’s data, and that’s what the legislature is going to need to address.”

He cited some examples in which the tech was abused and residents’ privacy was violated.

“We know there was an officer in Florida who was using the LPR data to track, like, an ex-girlfriend or something like that,” he added. “I don’t think we had really strong penalties at all for that type of misuse.”

The Hernando County Sheriff’s Office indicated in a statement responding to the order that it was already in the process of dismantling the cameras.

RELATED: FIVE police officers FIRED and charged after allegedly abusing Flock system

“Prior to this state directive, the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office had already proactively initiated the removal of Flock ALPR cameras previously located along county-maintained rights-of-way,” read the sheriff’s office statement.

The removal did not apply to “approximately 20 privately owned and operated ALPR cameras” in the county, the statement added.

“You know, you want to get in your car, and you want to go to down to Buc-ee’s in Saint Augustine,” said DeSantis. “It’s really none of the government’s damn business if you’re doing that.”

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​Flock cameras, Florida, Law enforcement agencies, License plate readers, Privacy rights, Ron desantis, Politics