For New Mexico industries, little reassurance in the face of tariffs

LAS CRUCES — Importers and industry heads in Doña Ana County are talking to political leaders about the uncertainties spawned by the Trump administration’s frequently-changing tariff policies, but beyond sympathetic ears and promises to fight for New Mexico businesses and robust trade, New Mexico politicians have limited reassurance to offer.

On Saturday, Deb Haaland, a Democratic candidate for governor, took a tour of Picacho Coffee Roasters in Las Cruces, where founder and roaster Chad Morris said tariffs had hiked the cost of raw coffee beans he imports from Mexico, Columbia, Ethiopia, Sumatra and elsewhere. Roasting five days a week with half of the crew he might employ, Morris said coffee prices were going up even as farmers and roasters like himself are being squeezed.

“Who benefits from this? It’s certainly not us,” he told Haaland, who nodded sympathetically.

In Santa Teresa, which sits on a key port of entry between New Mexico and the Mexican state of Chihuahua, U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, D-N.M., held a closed-door briefing Monday with manufacturers and plant managers, including domestic and foreign-owned subsidiaries, worried about “a very chaotic business environment,” as Vasquez put it.

The meeting reportedly addressed unpredictable cost increases for imported supplies and products, an adverse export environment as trade partners impose tariffs of their own and decreased local investment by logistics and manufacturing companies, just as Santa Teresa and Sunland Park have been building industrial space and infrastructure in anticipation of expansive investments near the border.

Vasquez and New Mexico Border Industrial Association director Jerry Pacheco spoke to reporters at a location separate from the briefing, out at the Doña Ana County International Jetport, with none of the participants except Pacheco participating — for fear of retaliation, both men said.

“This administration has shown that it will have good-faith relationships with you if you’re a friend to the administration,” Vasquez said. “That’s not the way economic policy should work.”

“A lot of these companies are worldwide companies,” Pacheco added. “They don’t want to get targeted; they don’t want to speak too freely about what’s happening to them.”

Candidates running to succeed Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham as New Mexico’s governor in 2026 have vowed to build investment, jobs, transportation and infrastructure necessary for economic development.

Republican Gregg Hull, the mayor of Rio Rancho, has touted his own background as an entrepreneur and leader of New Mexico’s third-largest city. Democratic candidates include Haaland, the former congresswoman and Interior secretary under President Joe Biden; Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman; and former Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima. They all promise to help small businesses thrive and to diversify an economy heavily beholden to the oil and gas industry.

Yet when it comes to federal policy, including tariffs, governors’ options for direct action are limited. In July, a coalition of Democratic governors — including from neighboring states Arizona and Colorado — jointly announced the formation of task groups and analyses of the harms caused by the new tariff policies in their states. New York issued a “tariff resource guide” with information on trade impacts and programs available to mitigate the effects.

“I think we can find solutions to any issue that people are having if we come together and we talk about it,” Haaland told the Journal during her visit to the coffee roaster, but had little to say about navigating the tariff environment.

Morris recognized “my problem is a federal problem. I’m not sure what a state official could do.”

Helping business know what to expect can be tough for federal representatives, too.

“The nature of the tariffs that this administration has proposed has been so uncertain,” Vasquez said on Monday. “They’ve been going up and down, up and down.”

Hundreds of potential jobs have been lost as investors rethink establishing operations in the county, Vasquez said. As an example, he pointed to the withdrawal of Polish battery manufacturer Impact Clean Power Technology from plans to build all-electric school buses in the county, citing the cost of tariffs.

Last weekend, President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled a preliminary trade agreement setting a 15% tariff on most European goods imported to the United States. On Monday, Trump told reporters in Scotland that countries without trade agreements in place by Aug. 1 would generally be hit with tariff rates in the range of 15% to 20%.

The president has said that the short term pain of uncertainly will be worth the long term gains in improved trade deals for the United States, which has seen massive trade deficits for decades. This is been a priority for the Trump administration since his first term.

“I have visited the laid off factory workers and the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals,” Trump said in his speech accepting the GOP nomination for president in 2016 in Cleveland. “These are the forgotten men and women of our country and they are forgotten, but they’re not gonna be forgotten long. These are people who work hard but no longer have a voice. I am your voice!”

But, many in New Mexico worry they won’t survive the short term pain. “People are not placing orders, or they’re postponing buying decisions,” Pacheco said. “And the other side is … the business we’re not getting because they’re not going to make a multi-million dollar investment decision in this environment. I’ve seen three deals, two in the automotive industry and one in the electronics industry, totally go away.”

Earlier this month, Vasquez co-sponsored a bill with U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., ordering the Commerce Department to set a multi-agency economic development strategy for the U.S.-Mexico border, including job growth and workforce training, investments in water, power and transportation system needed to expand businesses related to international trade and measures to control the costs of imports and exports. Vasquez has also advocated removing unilateral decisions on foreign trade from the executive branch and requiring congressional involvement.

“We’re going to keep pushing,” Vasquez said, vowing to work with the Republican majority on jobs and industrial development, as well as immigration reform, which he described as crucial to the U.S. relationship with Mexico as a key trading partner.