Donald Trump crowed on Twitter Saturday that the new deal with Mexico involves an agreement to “immediately” begin buying “large quantities” of U.S. farm products. Trump’s tweet stumped most folks, who were confused that the deal suddenly seemed to revolve around farm products instead of efforts to stem immigration to the U.S.
But the problem is that there’s nothing about purchase of farm products in the “joint declaration” on the agreement issued by the State Department and Mexico. Three Mexican officials with knowledge of the deliberations also said that they’re unaware of any such agreement-- going so far to say that the issue was not even raised during negotiations.
Furthermore, Mexico has no “state-owned” conglomerate that could quickly buy up vast new stores of U.S. agricultural products-- which seems to be the scenario that Trump was envisioning. Mexico's purchases of U.S. agricultural products would depend on buyer demand, just as they have all along.
In addition, tariffs imposed on another countries products by the U.S. are not paid to the U.S. by that country. They are paid by importers and the costs are absorbed by America companies and consumers. Trump has often repeated his lie about how tariffs work, despite corrections by the media and his own officials.
So a final word about what was in the agreement. The New York Times reported that much of what was outlined in the joint declaration concerning Mexico’s efforts to stem the number of immigrants heading to the U.S. border was already promised by Mexico over the past several months-- and was not in response to Trump’s threat to impost tariffs on Mexican products.
So basically, another lie from Trump in order to make a manufactured issue disappear. Nothing going on-- time for everyone to move along.
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