Leadership Quote by Stephen F. Lynch

The throwaway kicker, "if you can believe that", is doing the heavy lifting here. Stephen F. Lynch isn’t simply reciting a statistic; he’s staging disbelief as a rhetorical cue, inviting the listener to share a sense of violated common sense. In political speech, astonishment is rarely spontaneous. It’s a signal flare: the system is broken, someone is to blame, and the audience’s frustration is justified.

The line’s intent is compact and tactical. By focusing on "average real wages" and anchoring it to a 10-year decline, Lynch frames Mexico not as a rising competitor but as a place where work has failed to translate into better living standards. That matters in U.S. trade debates because it undercuts the sunny promise that globalization lifts all boats. If Mexican factory workers are earning less in real terms, the subtext is that the benefits of cross-border manufacturing are being captured elsewhere: by multinational firms, by elites, by supply-chain intermediaries, by anyone except the people whose labor makes the exports possible.

Contextually, it also speaks to a common American political move: using conditions abroad to argue for different choices at home. Lower Mexican wages can be deployed in two directions at once: as evidence that trade deals haven’t delivered development, and as a warning that a low-wage equilibrium pressures U.S. workers too. The casual tone keeps it populist-adjacent without sounding ideological. He’s not asking you to master a model; he’s asking you to feel the punch line of a policy failure.