Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said Thursday he will not attend a planned meeting next week with President Trump. Nieto tweeted: “This morning we informed the White House that I will not attend the work meeting planned for next Tuesday with @POTUS.”
The tweet was clearly an intentional slap in the face meant to shut down discussions with the U.S. about Mexico paying for Trump’s Border Wall.
President Trump countered Peña Nieto’s announcement by tweeting that he and the Mexican president had “agreed” to cancel the meeting after it became clear Nieto was adamantly opposed.
Nieto seemed to be irked by Trump’s announcement that he intended to move forward with his plan to build the Border Wall and to force Mexico to pay for its construction. Trump mentioned in a number of tweets written this morning that “the U.S. has a 60 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico,” and said that “if Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting.”
Mexico’s ex-president Vicente Fox made clear back in February of last year that he considered the notion of forcing Mexico to pay for such a wall offensive, saying “I’m not going to pay for that f***ing wall.”
Curiously, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters the meeting would be rescheduled, without explaining why.
Meanwhile, the GOP-dominated Congress has told the President that “they” will pay for the wall that he ordered via executive action the day before. That order directed Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to “immediately plan, design and construct a physical wall along the southern border.’’
The value of the Mexican peso dropped deeply after Nieto announced the meeting was off. Only time will tell how much the deteriorating relationship between Mexico and the U.S. will effect both countries. Mexico is the U.S.’s third-largest trading partner and the second-largest export market for American-made goods, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Just an aside. . . . twitter now an unofficial mechanism for diplomatic communication??
