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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

America should agree to merge with Mexico. It would be more powerful than anyone has imagined.

It would make sense for North America to harmonize more standards to create an bigger economic community between CA, MX and USA.

For example I came across a situation recently where someone want to export a few year old Mercedes vehicle from Canada to USA, and it was impossible as the standards were not harmonized, and the manufacturer would not certify the vehicle as meeting the USA standards.

The US government intentionally doesn't harmonize vehicle standards and disallows private importation of cars less than 25 years old as a non-tariff trade barrier. These protectionist measures are terrible for consumers but they are strongly supported by manufacturers, dealers, and unions so the policy is unlikely to change.

Wyomingites and west virginians don't want their ~~blood poisoned~~ voting power diluted. It'll be a hard sell to reform the US in any significant capacity. I don't foresee it happening soon.

Early on in US history the Yucatan tried to join the country and was only narrowly rejected over concerns that it would be a slave state.

After the Mexican-American war Polk wanted the US to expand all the way to modern Santiago de Queretaro and could have easily done it but the guy who ultimately negotiated the treaty on the US' behalf was against the idea of US expansion so negotiated against the US' own interests.

If those two decisions had gone the other way then it seems likely that all of Mexico if not all of Central America would be part of the United States today.

Curiously, the US Articles of Confederation explicitly permit the annexation of Canada within the United States but offers no similar offer to Mexico.

> Article XI. Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of the united states, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this union: but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine states.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/articles-of-con...

This isn't a new idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_of_Mexico_Movement

Mexico has a gdp a bit larger than Florida, the 4th largest state by gdp. Adding Mexico would add less than 7% to our gdp.

The power of the us + Mexico would be very similar to just the US.

From a national security perspective, wealth is important but so is population size. If you have both, you win. Industrial production is a third factor in national security, related to wealth and population size, and Mexico can help with that. At the moment, Brazil is a non-player but in a hundred years that could change given their population size and you could have a potential Brazil-US rivalry. An integration with Mexico will be a contingency for that, giving north US a buffer zone in addition to a larger population.

From a prosperity perspective, that seven percent will grow, especially when Mexico can benefit from strong US institutions. You also have to factor in that the entire pie will get bigger due to free labor and capital flow, which will be the main win here. So it won't be 107 percent it'll be 107 percent times by a factor.

Mexico is also culturally adjacent to the US being a Catholic majority country and immigrants from Mexico have a history of integrating quickly.

Transfer payments may be needed to make the US lower classes "whole" given they're now competing with so many more people which will dilute their wages. But if done properly it should be a positive sum situation where everyone benefits.

Pan-Americanism is a fundamentally good idea if implemented gradually and carefully.

I completely agree with your positive outlook on the possibilities. Too many people are adopting a zero-sum mindset on the subject.

Why ?

With NAFTA and USMCA the US can reap all the trade benefits without any of the liabilities

Turn on the immigration spigot and control population growth at will

In this scenario, metric system adoption will probably prevent this merger /s.

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