The idea that Donald Trump successfully used the threat of tariffs to force Mexico to agree to an immigration deal is yet another fiction cooked up by the Trump propaganda machine.

The truth is this: Trump squandered any negotiating leverage he may have had by making an idle threat that everybody knew he couldn’t possibly follow through on.

The threat of imposing an immediate 5 percent tariff on Mexican goods, and then gradually ratcheting up the rate to 25 percent, was never real. The stock market hated it. The Chamber of Commerce and other U.S. business groups hated it. American consumers hated it. American manufacturers and farmers hated it. Even Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz hated it.