President Trump threatened on Thursday to cancel his meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto if his country won’t agree to pay for the border wall.
The U.S. has a 60 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico. It has been a one-sided deal from the beginning of NAFTA with massive numbers…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2017
of jobs and companies lost. If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2017
“The U.S. has a 60 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico. It has been a one-sided deal from the beginning of NAFTA with massive numbers of jobs and companies lost,” Trump tweeted Thursday morning. “If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting.”
Trump has promised since June 2015 to build a “big, beautiful wall” along the U.S. southern border with Mexico and make Mexico pay for it. In recent days, he’s switched rhetoric to say the American taxpayer would foot the bill and Mexico would reimburse the United States later.
Experts have floated the idea of taxing remittances or imposing fees for crossing the border from Mexico into the United States as ways to get Mexicans to pay for the wall.
Last night, Peña Nieto said his country “will not pay for any wall” and ordered the 50 Mexican consulates in the United States to step up their protections for Mexican immigrants.
The two leaders met during the campaign in Mexico City, but their stories conflict as to whether they discussed Trump’s demand for Mexico to pay for the wall. Trump said in a press conference they didn’t discuss it, but Peña Nieto later tweeted he told Trump that he would not authorize payment for the wall.
On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order that he says would start the process of building the wall.
