By Todd J. Gillman / The Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON — Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump revved up supporters with a vow to build a border wall and force Mexico to pay for it. The promise deeply offended Mexicans, and in a testy phone call shortly after taking office, Trump all but begged his Mexican counterpart to stop embarrassing him by publicly refusing to give in to the demand.
“I have to have Mexico pay for the wall — I have to,” the president told President Enrique Pena Nieto. “I have been talking about it for a two-year period.”
The Washington Post obtained transcripts of that Jan. 27 call and another friction-filled conversation the next day between Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The Post published the bombshells Thursday morning.
A fairly tepid White House account released at the time didn’t come close to capturing the acrimony over the wall — or the lengths to which Trump went in hopes of freeing himself from a political trap of his own making, with his repeated campaign promises that hinged on Mexican acquiescence. No serious observer of Mexican society and politics ever believed that Mexico would pay for the wall, and Pena Nieto told Trump that during the campaign, and again in their call Jan. 27.
The official White House account, however, called it “a productive and constructive call” that covered trade issues and the flow of drugs and guns across the border. “With respect to payment for the border wall, both presidents recognize their clear and very public differences of positions on this issue but have agreed to work these differences out as part of a comprehensive discussion on all aspects of the bilateral relationship,” the statement said.
The statement made no mention of Trump’s assurances that he wouldn’t try to make Mexico pay for the wall directly. Instead, he told Pena Nieto, “it will come out in the wash” as part of tariffs or other funding mechanisms.
That would be a face-saving approach for Trump, although he never even alluded to such a workaround in the near daily campaign mentions of the wall and his resolve to extract payment for it from Mexico.
The day before the call, the White House floated the idea of a 20 percent tariff on Mexican imports to pay for the wall. But rather than Mexico or its residents, such a tariff would hit U.S. consumers and businesses — a breach of Trump’s pledge.
The president’s 2018 budget request, approved in July by the U.S. House, provides $1.6 billion for roughly 74 miles of border wall, levee and fence — all paid by U.S. taxpayers.
The call began at 9:35 a.m. on that Friday and lasted 53 minutes.
“My people stand up and say, ‘Mexico will pay for the wall,’” Trump told his counterpart. “We are both in a little bit of a political bind.”
Over and over, Trump urged his counterpart simply to stop saying publicly that Mexico won’t pay for the wall.
Pena Nieto told Trump that his wall proposal is “unthinkable … We find this completely unacceptable for Mexicans to pay for the wall that you are thinking of building.”
He notes Trump’s “small political margin” given his campaign vows, but urges the new U.S. leader to understand that he is also constrained by public opinion, and that Mexican sensibilities would not allow him to give in to the demand.
Trump threatens tariffs to reduce the $60 billion trade deficit, suggesting that he would view this revenue as Mexico’s contribution to financing the border wall. The tariffs, he said, could range from 10 percent to 35 percent. Pena Nieto balks, and Trump shoots back that he shouldn’t be surprised.
“This is what I have been saying for a year and a half on the campaign trail. I have been telling this to every group of 50,000 people or 25,000 people — because no one got people in their rallies as big as I did. But I have been saying I wanted to tax people that treated us unfairly at the border, and Mexico is treating us unfairly,” Trump said. “I got elected on this proposal.”
Pena Nieto again tried to talk him out of that approach, arguing that economic development — job creation on his side of the border — would be the most effective “virtual wall” to reduce migration.
Trump’s response was twofold. First, he said, economic conditions ebb and flow and “When times are tough, that is why we have a wall, because we do not want people to come across the border. We do not want them coming across. We have enough people coming across, we want to stop it cold.”
Next he cited drug trafficking.
“You have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico,” Trump said, again returning to his own political experience. “I won New Hampshire because New Hampshire is a drug-infested den. … We are becoming a drug-addicted nation and most the drugs are coming from Mexico or certainly from the southern border.”
Trump urged his counterpart simply to stop saying publicly that Mexico won’t pay for the wall.
“If you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that,” Trump said. ” … You cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall. I am just going to say that we are working it out.”
As a sweetener Trump reiterated his boast that “I know how to build very inexpensively, so it will be much lower than these numbers I am being presented with, and it will be a better wall and it will look nice. And it will do the job.”
This was not persuasive.
Pena Nieto instead urged Trump to stop hammering the promise about building a wall and making his country pay for it. “Let us stop talking about the wall. I have recognized the right of any government to protect its borders as it deems necessary and convenient. But my position has been and will continue to be very firm saying that Mexico cannot pay for that wall,” he said.
Trump’s reply: “But you cannot say that to the press. … I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances.”
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