Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is sending his foreign secretary to Washington to try to negotiate a solution with the White House. Obrador said he has not yet gotten a response to a letter he wrote to Trump after the tariff threat.
“This is not a legal issue,” Obrador said on Friday. “We want to have a good relation with the U.S. and we do not want the first response to be a legal procedure. We want dialogue and to reach an accord without a legal process. We must find a way out of this that works for both governments.”
In his letter to Trump, Obrador argued that “social problems are not solved with taxes or coercive measures.”
“We must understand what is happening in the U.S. now, but we must be prudent and act with a warm heart and cool head,” he said. “We want a truce but the homeland is first.”
Mexico’s deputy foreign minister for North America, Jesus Seade, said that it would be disastrous if Trump imposed the new tariffs.
Trump’s surprise announcement comes as the administration urges Congress to approve the pending U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which is designed to replace the NAFTA deal reached in 1994. It is not immediately clear what impact the tariff threat will have on the draft agreement.
Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, in a conference call with reporters, said the trade agreement and tariff threat “are not linked.”
“These are not tariffs as part of a trade dispute,” Mulvaney said. “These are tariffs as part of an immigration problem. USMCA is a trade matter and completely separate.”
When asked which Mexican imports the administration means to target, Mulvaney replied, “All of them.”
Acting Secretary for Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan, in the conference call Thursday, said the border crisis has become “a national emergency.”
“U.S. immigration authorities now have over 80,000 people in custody, a record level that is beyond sustainable capacity with current resources,” he said.
The president’s statement called for action by Mexico:
“Mexico’s passive cooperation in allowing this mass incursion constitutes an emergency and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States. Mexico has very strong immigration laws and could easily halt the illegal flow of migrants, including by returning them to their home countries. Additionally, Mexico could quickly and easily stop illegal aliens from coming through its southern border with Guatemala.”
NPR’s Shannon Van Sant contributed to this report.
Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004))