President Donald Trump on Thursday claimed that Mexico will pay for his proposed wall on the southwest border because the money saved in a new trade deal will cover the costs.
“I often stated, ‘One way or the other, Mexico is going to pay for the Wall,’” Trump wrote on Twitter. “This has never changed. Our new deal with Mexico (and Canada), the USMCA, is so much better than the old, very costly & anti-USA NAFTA deal, that just by the money we save, MEXICO IS PAYING FOR THE WALL!”
The tweet came shortly after Trump’s contentious meeting with congressional Democratic leaders, in which he vowed to shutdown the government if he didn’t get the full $5 billion he requested for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Mexican officials have said the trade negotiations did not include a system for their country to fund a wall, according to The Washington Post.
"Boy, this is a stretch,” William Hoagland, the former staff director of the Senate Budget Committee, told the Post.
Hoagland, now a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said that the only reasoning he could see for Trump’s statement is that if the United States economy grows as a result of the deal with Mexico, the president could argue that the revenue is a kind of bonus, but he could not think of a way that the USMCA will “save” Americans money.
He added that “at the end of the day, the American taxpayer is still paying for it, because where are the revenues coming from? They are not coming from Mexican taxpayers.”
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