It’s a laudable comment, but what is Mexico’s motivation for paying for a fence that does not benefit them? Has anyone asked POTUS what authority he has to make a fence to his own specifications and then send the bill to someone else?
Say, for example, POTUS imposes a tariff on Mexican goods. The real payers would be US consumers who now pay higher prices. Isn’t that just a slight-of-hand accounting trick to make it look like Mexico is paying for the wall?
I love how your first question isn’t “Why on earth would any intelligent person think Mexico would pay for anything”?
Yes, it is.
Actually, it isn’t even a very good trick. It didn’t fool you, did it?
Why is it a “laudable” comment for the leader of the US regime to try to force another country into paying for something it doesn’t want?
The stated plan wasn’t to tax goods. The 10 or so million illegal workers send money home to their families. They presently do it using Western Union and other services that do these transactions and report them to the government.
A big enough tax on those remittances would pay for the wall.
Well, that is, assuming the workers didn’t just switch to mailing the money home as visa gift cards or something.
It’s not a laudable comment as far as Mexicans are concerned. It’s a laudable comment for the supporters who sit behind POTUS when he makes that declaration.
Yes and no. If you favor the outcome, you probably fall for the trick in the same way people support raising taxes on corporations in order to force them to “pay their fair share”. One can certainly argue that the corporations don’t have to raise prices, but the same argument applies to Mexico and Mexican corporations wrt tariffs.
No one ever asked Trump supporters if they wanted a wall that the U.S. would have to pay for (Trump’s current plan). I’d expect much less support for that.
Trump supporters also probably think a wall is cheap. It’s a wall…how much can that cost? They’ve got one in their backyard that the got at Home Depot.
The actual price ($70 billion + 150 million/year upkeep) is a bit of a shocker if they bother looking it up.
One of my co-workers thinks we should charge people to cross the border. Like a cover charge.
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Trump lied and promised he would deliver a major federal program for free. He had no reason to think he could fulfill that promise when he made it and he has been unable to do so since.
How is that laudable?
Maybe we could revitalize Operation Intercept. Wait for Mexico to crack and send a check.
What is the purpose of this comment? Like, is it serious? Or a joke?
The Mexico will pay for it was of course just a bit of campaign fodder that he saw his supporters lap up with gusto and so repeated again and again. Trumps thought process regarding this really didn’t go any further than that. Certainly not as far as how he would actually accomplish it.
When asked how this would be accomplished, he would go on some vague allusions to his super human negotiating prowess, with some additional implication of using the US’s economic and military might to coerce Mexico to cough up the dough.
In terms of the moral authority for demanding Mexico pay for his wall, I don’t know that anyone has bothered to ask that, but I’m sure that he would say something about how they owe us for all the rapists and murderers we’ve taken off their hands over the years.
You know his handlers had to be cringing every time he said it during the campaign. It was one thing when he promised something vague like making America great again or draining the swamp. He couldn’t keep those promises either but they were so vague nobody would ever be able to hold him accountable. But the Mexican wall was so specific.
Obviously, it didn’t hurt him in 2016. He was just a candidate then. He was free to claim anything. He was able to convince enough dummies to believe him and he got elected.
But in 2020, he’s going to have to face his greatest opponent; himself. He’ll have to run on his record. And you know everyone running against him will be asking him where his wall is and where’s the money from Mexico.
What’s worse for Trump is that he’s too thin-skinned to let it go. When people taunt him about his failure, he’ll engage with them and drag it out.
I know what you’re saying, but we’re talking Trump supporters here. Anyone with a single random brain cell knocking around was aware that Mexico wasn’t paying for any wall. Then Dickhead Donnie started hassling Congress about it and crying about American funding for the wall. He thought it was a brilliant lawmaking bargaining chip because he’s a fucking moron.
Which brings us to: Is Trump now seriously contending again that Mexico is going to pay for it??
Because…
“They do nothing to help us, nothing,” Trump told the crowd. “They are going to pay for the wall, and they are going to enjoy it, OK, they are going to enjoy it,” he said, quoted by Reuters.
Peña Nieto replied shortly afterwards both in Spanish and English. “NO. Mexico will NEVER pay for a wall. Not now, not ever. Sincerely, Mexico (all of us),” the message read."
I’m unclear how any aspect of this is laudable, even under an extremely generous definition of the term. Even if it was somehow possible to build the wall economically, I’m hard-pressed to see that as a laudable mission.
Whether it’s tethered to reality in any way is, of course, completely irrelevant.
Trump knows that every time he says it, his cultists will cheer. Perhaps more than anything else in life, Trump likes people cheering at him. Ergo, he keeps saying it.
He has them trained, and they him. It’s a 2-way Skinner box on a national scale.
I snicker every time I see the title of this thread.
It’s all been worth it just to enjoy the YouTube comedy stylings of Presidente Vicente Fox.