Chief diplomat: ‘Mexico will not collaborate’ on wall
WASHINGTON — Even as the Trump administration backs away from the president’s promise of a wall from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, Mexico is standing firm: The United States will get no payment or cooperation, Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray said Thursday.
“Mexico will not collaborate in any way in the construction of a possible wall,” he told reporters at the Mexican Embassy during a visit that included meetings with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the president’s sonin-law, Jared Kushner.
Asked by The Dallas Morning News whether he received any assurance that President Donald Trump is giving up extracting the full cost of a wall from Mexico, Videgaray said the topic never came up.
“The wall is not a bilateral issue. We do not get together and discuss the wall. We Mexicans view the wall as an unfriendly gesture,” he said.
On Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly testified to the U.S. Senate that the administration has no intention of constructing a barrier “from sea to shining sea,” despite Trump’s oftrepeated campaign promise. He told lawmakers that Trump has given him plenty of “elbow room” to decide where barriers make sense.
The frontier in Texas is defined by a river, including broad lakes and canyons soaring to 1,500 feet. Fencing is already in place in roughly 650 miles of the 2,200-mile border. Kelly said more is needed but he intends to be strategic, using personnel and electronic surveillance to improve security, without a full-border barrier that could cost as much as $25 billion, plus annual upkeep.
That amounted to a major reversal. On Jan. 25 — less than a week into his presidency — Trump signed an executive order reiterating his commitment to construction of a barrier along the entire southern border. He vowed that Mexico would pay for the project “100 percent” and that construction would begin within months.
His insistence on these outcomes enraged Mexicans, and President Enrique Pena Nieto scrapped a planned visit to Washington.
“That is something for the Americans to decide. It might not even work,” Videgaray said Thursday. “America is a sovereign nation and America can decide how to protect its own borders. It’s not a bilateral issue, and Mexico will not raise or put any funds towards that wall, even if it’s a mile or if it’s the full border, if it’s bricks or if it’s wire or if it’s bars. It’s not part of a bilateral discussion and shouldn’t be.”
Mexicans are less offended by Trump’s plan to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, ratified in 1994.
Trump has argued that free trade with Mexico has cost millions of American jobs and generally hurt the U.S. economy. But rather than a wholesale repudiation some NAFTA advocates had feared, he has taken a more measured approach, calling for modernization and tweaks.
“We do not shy away from modernizing NAFTA, making it better. It’s an almost 25year-old agreement. The world has changed,” Videgaray said. “We think there is sufficient space to make such a negotiation a win-win.”
Having spoken with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, Trump’s chief trade adviser, Videgaray said, “it becomes clear that we may not be that far apart . ... This should be a negotiation that strengthens the region and not separate us.”