President Trump is back to insisting that Mexico will pay for his border wall:
President Trump said at a campaign rally Tuesday night that Mexico will pay for his long-promised border wall “in the end.”
“In the end, Mexico is going to pay for the wall,” Trump said at the rally in Nashville, Tenn.
“They make all of this money, and they do absolutely nothing to stop people from going through Mexico, from Honduras and all these other countries, the caravan, all of this stuff,” the president said. “They do nothing to help us, nothing.”
“They’re going to pay for the wall, and they’re going to enjoy it,” Trump added.
Trump has promised since the early days of his campaign that he would build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and that Mexico would pay for it.
Mexico has said that it would not pay for a border wall.
Needless to say, the Mexican President disagrees:
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Tuesday fired back at President Trump for renewing his claim that Mexico would pay for Trump’s proposed border wall “in the end.”
“NO. Mexico will NEVER pay for a wall. Not now, not ever,” Peña Nieto wrote on Twitter. “Sincerely, Mexico (all of us).”
At a campaign rally in Tennessee earlier on Tuesday, Trump said that “in the end, Mexico is going to pay for the wall.”
“They make all of this money, and they do absolutely nothing to stop people from going through Mexico, from Honduras and all these other countries, the caravan, all of this stuff,” the president said. “They do nothing to help us, nothing.”
“They’re going to pay for the wall, and they’re going to enjoy it,” Trump added.
Trump has promised that Mexico would pay for a wall along the southern border since the early days of his campaign.
Mexico has repeatedly responded by saying they would not pay for the wall.
Here’s the Mexican President’s response on Twitter, which he sent in both English and Spanish:
President @realDonaldTrump: NO. Mexico will NEVER pay for a wall. Not now, not ever.
Sincerely, Mexico (all of us).
— Enrique Peña Nieto (@EPN) May 30, 2018
Presidente @realDonaldTrump: NO. México NUNCA pagará por un muro. Ni ahora, ni nunca.
Atentamente, México (todos nosotros).
— Enrique Peña Nieto (@EPN) May 30, 2018
As noted, this is an issue that President Trump has been pushing since the early days of his campaign, so it’s no surprise that he would keep bringing it up at his campaign-style rallies now that he’s President. As he’s found, though, it’s been far harder to either get the wall built or get Mexico to pay for it, than a campaign speech would make it seem to be. On the first part, Trump has repeatedly failed to get anything beyond paltry funding for his border wall, and most of that has actually ended up going toward repairing areas of the existing border fencing that has been in place for years now. While Trump made a grand production earlier this year of traveling to San Diego to view mock-ups of proposals for the wall, the reality of the situation is that there currently is no plan to begin construction of the law, and no indication that this funding will come any time soon. On at least two occasions last year, the President threatened to veto the entire Federal Budget unless it included what he considered adequate funding for the wall, but he never following through on those threats. More recently, he’s talked about using funds allocated to the Department of Defense to pay for at least part of the wall. It’s not clear, though, how he could do this legally without running afoul of the Constitution and Federal budget laws. In any case, despite Trump’s promises, and no doubt much to his frustration, there has been no movement whatsoever on the border wall and it’s unlikely there will be at any point before the midterms in November.
As for the issue of Mexico paying for the wall, it’s rather obvious that this is not going to happen. President Nieto made this clear from the first time he met with Trump when he visited Mexico City as a candidate for President, and he has not wavered from that position in the intervening time. Not surprisingly, his position is shared by every prominent Mexican politician regardless of political party and, of course, by the vast majority of the Mexican people. In the time since then, Trump has managed to sour the American relationship with its neighbor to the south thanks in no small part to a phone call in the days after he took office in 2017.
More recently, President Nieto canceled a planned visit to the United States back in February after yet another testy phone call between the two leaders that returned to the subject of the border wall. Added into all of this, of course, is the President’s approach to trade, including both the ongoing effort to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and the decision to expand the tariffs on aluminum and steel to include imports from Mexico, Canada, and Europe. Suffice it to say that between these trade policies and the border wall issue, our relationship with Mexico is probably in the worst shape its been in decades. If Trump continues with his insane insistence that Mexico pay for his border wall, a wall that may never be built, that relationship is only going to get worse.
