If Latinos were a stock, we would without a doubt be one of most volatile offerings on the market. Our value would be totally unpredictable, and prone to wild swings. We’re up. We’re down. We’re up again. We’re down again. The swings would depend largely on the mood of a country that still hasn’t figured how it feels about a subset of Americans whose lineage can be traced to Latin America.

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I’m not sure what is causing the hold up. This is 2025. It’s been more than 170 years after the end of the Mexican-American War resulted in thousands of Americans of Mexican descent being absorbed into the Southwest, 127 years after Puerto Rico became a territory of the United States, and 66 years since Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba which prompted over one million exiles to flee the island and seek refuge in the United States. 

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You would think that now that the nation’s 62 million Latinos make up 20% of the U.S. population and represent an annual GDP of more than $4 trillion according to the U.S. Latino GDP Report, more of our fellow Americans would have made up their minds about whether we’re a positive or a negative, an asset or a liability. 

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As subject matter goes, apparently Latinos are — for some Americans — the equivalent of advanced calculus. We’re neither Black nor white. We’re not a racial group, but more of an ethnic tribe. We assimilate like mad, and yet we have gone out of our way to preserve much of our culture. More than 70% of us speak English or a combination of English and Spanish, and yet we resist efforts to declare English as the official language of the United States. Lastly, we register to vote as Democrats by a 2-to-1 margins, and yet we reserve the right to vote for Republican candidates who we like. 

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Investors would naturally be tempted to buy shares when prices were low, and sell when prices got high. The trouble is, it’s not always easy to figure out when we’re high vs when we’re low. We’re omnipresent yet we’re invisible. We’re popular but we’re despised. We’re the solution to many of America’s problems, and still — some insist — we’re the biggest problem of all.

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When fellow Americans devour our food, steal our music, copy our style and adopt our customs, it suggests they clearly want to be like us. Yet, when they blame us for all of society’s ills, it feels like no one really likes us. Everyone wants to get rid of us, even though no one can live without us. We give a lot, but we’re always accused of taking. We love America, but we’re never quite sure if America loves us back. 

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Honestly, it doesn’t help that Latinos are more than a little bit confused ourselves about how we occupy this moment in time. Does the fact that Latinos turned out in big numbers for the 2024 presidential election mean that our stock is up? Or does the statistical reality that 46% of Latino voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump suggest that our stock is actually down? Does the fact that the U.S. Secretary of State is Cuban American signify that our stock is up? Or does the fact that — as he makes history — Marco Rubio is wiping his feet on the U.S. Constitution while carrying water for Trump mean that our stock is really down? Does the fact that U.S. employers agree that no one works harder than Latinos, and that immigrants from Mexico and Central America have made themselves essential to the U.S. economy mean that our stock is up? Or does the fact that so much of our work goes to make others wealthy while we lag behind prove that our stock is down?

Under the best of circumstances, playing the stock market can be like taking a ride on a rollercoaster. There is a reason why, when discussing the ups and downs of the market, the most commonly used metaphor is that of the popular carnival ride with its twists and plunges. You never know what’s around the next turn. 

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Of course, you don’t need to go to an amusement park to get a queasy stomach. Not when it’s come to you. In today’s America, it’s easy to feel as if you’re riding a rollercoaster. And it’s powered by different issues that have been in the news since Trump reclaimed the White House: tariffs, deportations, and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). And guess what? Latinos are strapped in and sitting in the front row. We’re there for every twist and turn. 

 

 

On April 2, 2025, Trump sent the stock market reeling when he nearly sparked a global trade war over tariffs. In fact, “nearly” may not apply. The war might already be underway. We’ll have to wait and see. 

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When Trump announced on what he called “Liberation Day” that the United States would be imposing a slew of tariffs on exports from more than 60 countries, stocks plummeted. A day later, when he reversed course and put a 90-day pause on most of the tariffs, stocks rebounded. But when Trump announced he was ratcheting up tariffs on China to the insanely high level of 145%, stocks plummeted again.

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It’s harrowing, and Latinos are part of the story because of Mexico, which was  the largest trading partner for the United States in 2024. Not Canada. Not China. Not the European Union. But Mexico.

That’s right. Mexico is now America’s favorite super-mercado. Last year, Americans spent a staggering $840 billion in imports from Mexico. Canada ranked No. 2 for trade with the U.S. in 2024 at $761 billion in imports, and China ranked third at $582 billion. Along with Canada, Mexico was one of the first targets of Trump’s tariff tantrum. Our two North American neighbors were going to get slapped with 30% tariffs on all goods headed for the United States. According to Trump, Canada and Mexico were guilty of “ripping us off” because they both have trade deficits with the United States. But then one of the president’s advisers must have whispered in his ear and reminded him that the United States had just a few years ago entered into a new trade pact with its neighbors. The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was intended to facilitate trade and avoid trade wars.  

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Besides, Trump had been framing the new round of tariffs as “reciprocal” in nature. He was merely giving other countries that had imposed tariffs on us a taste of their own medicine, he said. The problem was that neither Canada nor Mexico had played that game, and so there was nothing to reciprocate. So the White House blinked, and our neighbors got a reprieve from the new round of tariffs. 

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However, Mexico isn’t out of the woods yet. There are still existing  25% U.S. tariffs on imported autos, steel and aluminum. And many of the cars that wind up in the United States are made in Mexico.  For our neighbor to the south, the tariff telenovela isn’t quite over. That means that, for Latinos, the fu isn’t over either. You could make the argument — and many have done so — that expanding trade with Latin American countries such as Mexico, Costa Rica, and Colombia has helped to raise the profile of U.S. Latinos. What happens to that profile when those trading routes dry up due to this madness over tariffs? 

Immigration is the only issue where Trump is above water. According to an April survey by Pew Research Center, Americans have more confidence in Trump’s ability to make good decisions about immigration (48% “very confident” or “somewhat confident”) than they do is his ability to handle other issues including trade (45%), the economy (45%), foreign policy (44%) or a public health crisis (45%).

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Yet, Trump’s aggressive tactics for removing the undocumented may be backfiring. In a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released in the same month, fifty-three percent of Americans say they disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration. 

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Trump and his followers think there are just too many foreign-born people in the United States (whether they’re here legally or illegally) and we need to get rid of them. MAGA is obsessed with changing demographics. Panicked by the amount of by migration over the last few decades from what Trump has called “shit hole countries,” MAGA wants to make America white again. As they see it, that’s how a nation becomes “great” again. 

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Of course, Trump is too smart to say the quiet part out loud. So he cynically frames the issue as being about public safety. When he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower in New York in June 2015 to declare that he was running for president the first time, he warned that Mexico was sending to the United States some bad hombres — murderers, criminals, rapists, drug traffickers, etc. Now, Trump says he is doing something about it. He has told aides that he wants to remove 1 million people in his first year. 

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That figure is impossibly high. President Barack Obama (aka “The Deporter in Chief”) holds the record, and that’s only about 400,000 deportations annually. What I call the “ICE Machine” isn’t equipped to handle more, even if the lights stay on and the buses are running 24-7.

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Trump has to be counting on a movida (a shady maneuver or workaround). It’s likely that he intends to count as “deportations” what are normally known as “voluntary returns.” There is no hearing, no lawyer and no judge. An undocumented immigrant who is apprehended by the Border Patrol is asked by an agent at a processing center if he or she would prefer to be sent to Mexico on an expedited basis instead of waiting weeks for a deportation hearing, which could have the same outcome — namely, forced return to Mexico. This is a perfectly legitimate tool for handling undocumented immigrants. It’s just not a deportation.

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Be that as it may, I’ve heard from Latinos who are all for an increase in deportations as long as there is due process. They think it brings up our stock to rid our community of undesirables. Others disagree, and suggest that as long as deportations are in the headlines, the image of Latinos will be tarnished and our stock will continue to plummet. 

When the U.S. Supreme Court banned affirmative action in college admissions in June 2023, the rightwing found itself needing a new racial boogeyman to scare up votes from white folks. 

It also needed a plausible theory as to why white people still deserved victim status. That’s ironic, isn’t it? After decades of telling Latino and Black Americans not to be victims, white people can’t wait to claim the title for themselves. So if they could no longer claim — in the post affirmative action era — that they were being victimized by race-based college admissions, then what could they claim to be victimized by?

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The answer: DEI. Suddenly, it was those terrible unfair programs at corporations and universities that promote DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) that were holding down white people. 

And since the Trump Administration likes to cast itself as the official defender of white victims, it made sense that the Trump White House, Department of Justice, Department of Defense, and Department of Education would declare an all-out war against DEI. We really do live in a black-and-white country where people see things in black-and-white. MAGA thinks the whole concept of DEI is just a fancy way to facilitate discrimination against white people. Meanwhile, my Black friends are convinced that the crackdown on DEI is all about them, that it is intended to keep them down and erase their gains. 

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Latinos understand the truth — that both camps are wrong. In 2025, the war on DEI is all about Latinos. We’re the future, after all. We’re on track to make up 30% of the U.S. population by 2050. At the point, Black Americans are likely to still make up only about 14%. No one goes to war over 14%. No, Trump’s anti-DEI crusade is about trying to prevent Latinos from ascending to positions of power. 

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Because what white people in the United States are really afraid of is not a fabled “invasion” by our southern neighbor, or having to “press one for English,” or having to put up with the sight of Mexican flags at immigration protests. It’s that when they become the statistical minority in the United States — and it is “when” not “if” — they might be treated just as badly by Latinos as they themselves treated Latinos with the demographics were on the other foot.  

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So is the Trump administration’s brass-knuckled war on DEI a good thing, or a bad thing, for Latinos? Will it send our stock price higher, or cause it to crater?

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Honestly, I’d call it a draw. Either way, it doesn’t matter. We should be careful not to give DEI or Trump too much credit or too much power. Neither controls the destiny of America’s largest minority. DEI or no DEI, Latinos are going to continue to do what we always do — outwork anyone and everyone, until we get what we deserve.

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Well folks, the opening bell has rung. Another day of trading is now underway. Latinos are on the stock exchange, and the price is — all things considered — a bargain. 

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My advice is to get in now. Why? Because this stock is sturdy, dependable and resilient. The price is going to climb. Bet on it. This stock is going right through the roof. You don’t want to miss out.                                                                                                                             

Ruben Navarrette — a regular contributor to Latino Magazine — is a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate , writer of the Navarrette Nation newsletter at Substack, author of “A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano,” host of the podcast, “Ruben In The Center” and a popular speaker on the lecture circuit.

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