Trump’s wall
The money could be better spent helping our southern neighbors develop their economies.
President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and that Mexico would pay for it made for good politics, but now the obvious is becoming clear: If it is to be built, the tab will be picked up by American taxpayers.
It turns out the newly convened Congress, with Republican majorities in both chambers, is discussing the inclusion of wall construction funds in upcoming spending bills, which Trump defended on Twitter by saying that any money spent “will be paid back by Mexico later!”
Let’s get a couple of things straight: The proposed 2,000-milelong wall will be very expensive, with current construction estimates of up to $25 billion plus $750 million in annual maintenance costs, and there is no way Mexico will agree to pay for it.
President Enrique Peña Nieto has been clear about that, and his domestic politics would never permit it. Yet Trump seems to think Mexico can be strong-armed into funding something it does not want and that serves no useful economic or even domestic purpose for either side of the border.
Trump told the New York Times on Friday that repayment might come out of a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement that he has vowed to make more U.S. friendly.
That differs from his earlier threat to cut off remittances sent home by Mexican workers illegally in the U.S. until the Mexican government antes up for the wall, but whether that or his mass deportation threats for those immigrants might still happen remains to be seen.
We find troubling the absence of any reasonable leadership out of Texas on the issue of the wall — 1,000 miles of which would be built in our state — but then we’re reminded that Trump might have learned the value of border bashing and fear mongering from our highest state officials.
While they are quick to extol the importance of Mexico as our state’s leading trade partner — $95 billion in 2015 — they learned early on that demagoguery about the border stirs voters.
Our view is that Mexico, with whom we have a long, shared history, should be treated as the neighbor, friend and important business partner it is, not a political punching bag.
We’re OK with negotiations to update NAFTA, which went into effect in 1994 and might need some changes, but Trump’s allegations that it is broadly unfavorable to the U.S. are wrong. We would urge him to talk to President George H.W. Bush about it, since it was largely negotiated during his presidency.
As for the wall, we would urge Trump to see it for what it is — a $25 billion white elephant that won’t stop the flow of desperate people seeking to escape poverty and, increasingly, violence in their home countries.
That money could be better spent helping our southern neighbors develop stronger economies and institutions so their citizens can stay put and have decent lives.
President Ronald Reagan got it about walls. In Berlin in 1987, he famously told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear his down — we would urge Trump to never build one.