North America’s trade arteries are clogged, not with goods but with inefficiency, duplication, and gaps in enforcement that smugglers exploit every day. The United States and Mexico run separate customs regimes, each with its own bureaucracy, inspection standards, and data systems. That fragmentation slows legitimate trade and leaves exploitable cracks in border security. In a continent where contraband can move from a remote checkpoint to a major U.S. city in hours, the cost of those cracks is measured in both money and lives. Recent ad-hoc U.S. and Mexican coordination on border security policies have proven to slow down fentanyl trade. However, coordination under two siloed customs systems is slow, inconsistent, and reactive. This article will present a brief case for a single, binational joint customs agency.

Over the past two administrations in the White House, the United States has increasingly moved away from the principle of strategic ambiguity that is supposed to shape U.S. foreign and defense policy toward the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China. This piece examines the origins of strategic ambiguity as a policy, reviews its effectiveness, and argues that there is a need for the U.S. to actively restart abiding by the constraints of the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 and the principles enshrined therein.