Washington/Mexico City, May 31
US President Donald Trump, responding to a surge of illegal immigrants across the southern border, vowed on Thursday to impose a tariff on all goods coming from Mexico, starting at 5% and ratcheting much higher until the flow of people ceases.
Trump’s move dramatically escalates his battle to control a wave of tens of thousands of asylum seekers, including many Central American families fleeing poverty and violence, that has swelled alongside his promises to make it harder to get US refuge and his efforts to build a wall on the Mexican border.
The announcement rattled investors who feared that worsening trade friction could hurt the global economy. The Mexican peso, US stock index futures and Asian stock markets tumbled on the news, including the shares of Japanese automakers who ship cars from Mexico to the United States.
The President’s decision, announced on Twitter and in a subsequent statement, was a direct challenge to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and took the Mexican government by surprise on a day when it had started a formal process to ratify a trade deal with the United States and Canada (USMCA).
It raised the risk of devastating economic relations with the biggest US trade partner for goods. Mexico, heavily dependent on cross-border trade, rose to that ranking as a result of Trump’s trade war with China. The measures against Mexico open up a new front on trade and if implemented are bound to trigger retaliation that would hit heartland, Trump-supporting farming and industrial states.
Lopez Obrador responded in a letter he posted on Twitter, calling Trump’s policy of America First “a fallacy” and accusing him of turning the United States into a “ghetto,” that stigmatized and mistreated migrants.
Determined to avoid a break down in Mexico’s most important bilateral relationship, since Trump threatened to close the world’s busiest land border, Obrador’s government has drastically tightened controls on the movement of migrants, detaining and deporting thousands in recent months, while calling for US aid to tackle root causes. — Reuters
Country will ‘overcome’ Trump threats: Obrador
- Mexico’s President said on Friday he would respond with “great prudence” to threats by his US counterpart Donald Trump to slap tariffs on Mexican goods entering the US, and called on Mexicans to unite to deal with the challenge
- President Lopez Obrador said Foreign Minister Ebrard would be in Washington tasked with convincing the US government that Trump’s measures were in neither country’s interest
- “I tell all Mexicans to have faith, we will overcome this attitude of the US govt, they will make rectifications,” Lopez Obrador said
Radical action will give push to 2020 campaign
- In the biggest migrant surge on the US-Mexican border in a decade, US officials say 80,000 people are being held in custody with an average of 4,500 mostly Central American migrants arriving daily, overwhelming the ability of border patrol officials to handle them
- Trump has accused Mexico of failing to do enough to halt the flow of asylum-seekers. He has been itching to take radical, headline-grabbing action on the issue, which he sees as critical to his 2020 reelection campaign because it energises his base
- But the sudden tariff threat comes at a peculiar time, given how hard the administration has been pushing for passage of the USMCA, updating NAFTA
from The Tribune http://bit.ly/2Z5Jj9r
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/eA8V8J
No comments: