Mexico’s treasurer quits after Trump visit
Mexican Treasury MEXICO CITY Minister Luis Videgaray resigned Wednesday, a week after Donald Trump’s controversial meeting with President Enrique Peña Nieto, which Videgaray reportedly had suggested.
Videgaray, one of Peña Nieto’s closest advisers, did not state a reason for stepping down, Finance Ministry spokeswoman Claudia Algorri said. Mexican media reported it was his idea to promote a meeting with Trump to calm financial markets nervous over the Republican presidential candidate’s rhetoric.
Trump has vowed to build a wall along the border and make Mexico pay for it and to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) because too many U.S. factories and jobs move south of the border.
Peña Nieto was savaged in the media for failing to stand up to Trump when they appeared together. The visit Aug. 31 sparked unkind headlines: “Trump uses EPN,” the Mexico City daily Reforma said, using the president’s initials.
Peña Nieto didn’t demand that Trump apologize for having called Mexican migrants rapists, drug smugglers and criminals. He stood silently at their joint news conference while the Republican candidate repeated his promise to build a wall on the border between the USA and Mexico. The Mexican president said he told Trump during their private meeting that Mexico would not pay for the wall, but Trump said they did not discuss the issue.
“I don’t believe you can find, in the long history of the Mexican presidency, a more stupid decision than the invitation that President Peña Nieto made to Donald Trump,” columnist Jesús Silva-Herzog wrote in Reforma. “The country feels betrayed by its president. … The president offered the symbols of the Mexican state to a narcissist who has founded his political career in hating a neighbor.”
Peña Nieto said he wanted to meet both presidential candidates to explain the importance of the U.S.-Mexican relationship. He told Milenio news channel that he had two options: confrontation or dialogue.