Mexico president cancels Trump summit as wall jibe deepens spat

MEXICO CITY/WASHINGTON: Mexico’s president on Thursday scrapped a planned summit with Donald Trump in the face of insistent tweets from the US president demanding Mexico pay for a border wall, a deepening spat that threatens Mexican efforts to salvage trade ties.

Taking a page out of Trump’s playbook, President Enrique Pena Nieto fired the salvo on Twitter, after Trump’s call for Mexico to foot the bill for his planned wall prompted a groundswell of calls in Mexico for next week’s meeting to be called off.

Trump said in a Twitter message earlier on Thursday that his Mexican counterpart should cancel his scheduled visit to Washington if Mexico refuses to pay for the wall that he has ordered constructed along the border.

Trump views the wall, a major promise during his election campaign, as part of a package of measures to curb illegal immigration.

Mexico has long insisted it will not pay for the planned wall.

“We have informed the White House that I will not attend the working meeting planned for next Tuesday with @POTUS,” Pena Nieto tweeted. “Mexico reiterates its willingness to work with the United States to reach agreements that favour both nations.”

Trump, who took office last Friday, signed an executive order for construction of the wall on Wednesday, the same day that Mexico’s foreign minister held talks with Trump aides in the White House aimed at healing ties.

Relations have been frayed since Trump launched his campaign in 2015, characterising Mexican migrants as murderers and rapists and pledging to build a wall that he said Mexico would pay for.

Trade ties are in the balance after Trump vowed to renegotiate the NAFTA and slap high tariffs on American companies that have moved jobs south of the border.