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Thursday, January 26, 2017

Raising the Stakes

The U.S. has a 60 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico. It has been a one-sided deal from the beginning of NAFTA with massive numbers of jobs and companies lost. If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting.

Wow!  The statement above is a tweet that President Trump sent out in the last ten minutes.  It is a major move of a sort we haven't seen for years.  Let's start with some background.

1.  In case you have been sleeping for the last two years, President Trump ran on a promise to build a border wall along most of the Mexico/USA border and to have Mexico pay for that wall.

2.  The idea of the wall and that Mexico would pay for it have not been popular in Mexico.

3.  There is a meeting scheduled for next week in Washington between President Nieto of Mexico and President Trump.

4.  Some Mexican officials have been saying that Nieto should cancel the visit to protest Trump's position on building a wall and having Mexico pay for it.  Nieto, however, has not said anything about canceling the visit.

In that context, Trump's tweet is a big move.  Basically, he's telling the Mexicans that if they want to cancel the visit, they can, but he is not going to change his policies.

Hopefully, the visit will go ahead as planned.  One thing is certain, however, it's a new day in Washington.  If we still had Obama/Kerry running US foreign policy, the noise from Mexico would probably resulted in an apology from Obama.

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