Trump Ends Tariffs Threat After Working Out A Deal With Mexico, Except….

Ken AshfordImmigration and Xenophobia, Trump & AdministrationLeave a Comment

Except the “deal” was going to happen anyway. Yup:

The deal to avert tariffs that President Trump announced with great fanfare on Friday night consists largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with the United States over the past several months, according to officials from both countries who are familiar with the negotiations.

Friday’s joint declaration says Mexico agreed to the “deployment of its National Guard throughout Mexico, giving priority to its southern border.” But the Mexican government had already pledged to do that in March during secret talks in Miami between Kirstjen Nielsen, then the secretary of homeland security, and Olga Sanchez, the Mexican secretary of the interior, the officials said.

The centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s deal was an expansion of a program to allow asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while their legal cases proceed. But that arrangement was reached in December in a pair of painstakingly negotiated diplomatic notes that the two countries exchanged. Ms. Nielsen announced the Migrant Protection Protocols during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee five days before Christmas.

And over the past week, negotiators failed to persuade Mexico to accept a “safe third country” treaty that would have given the United States the legal ability to reject asylum seekers if they had not sought refuge in Mexico first.

Mr. Trump hailed the agreement anyway on Saturday, writing on Twitter: “Everyone very excited about the new deal with Mexico!” He thanked the president of Mexico for “working so long and hard” on a plan to reduce the surge of migration into the United States.

It was unclear whether Mr. Trump believed that the agreement truly represented new and broader concessions, or whether the president understood the limits of the deal but accepted it as a face-saving way to escape from the political and economic consequences of imposing tariffs on Mexico, which he began threatening less than two weeks ago.

That last paragraph kills me. I suspect Trump doesn’t know. I suspect his staff has not told him the truth.

Trump, angry that the media was not selling this as a “win” took to Twitter (of course)

Facts are a bitch.

The fact that Trump is picking this fight after a supposed victory indicates he knows that he caved.

This made me laugh too:

In a pair of tweets Monday morning, Trump claimed that Mexico had agreed to action beyond what was outlined in the Friday announcement, teasing that more would be revealed soon.

“We have fully signed and documented another very important part of the Immigration and Security deal with Mexico, one that the U.S. has been asking about getting for many years,” he wrote, claiming that it would be “revealed in the not too distant future and will need a vote by Mexico’s Legislative body!..”

“We do not anticipate a problem with the vote,” he added, “but, if for any reason the approval is not forthcoming, Tariffs will be reinstated!”

But Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said Monday that there are no secret agreements between the two countries, and that what the governments committed to is to evaluate progress in 45 days and return to talks if the flow of migrants at the U.S. border does not diminish.

White House officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment about Mexico’s stance or to what Trump was referencing.