Not surprisingly, the topic of Mexico made President-elect Donald Trump’s January 11 press conference. Here is a video from the conference showing two clips where Trump revealed how he feels about Mexico. Just watch and read the transcript. Talk about being all over the place.
Excerpt 1:
TRUMP: But what really is happening, is the word is now out, that when you want to move your plant to Mexico or some other place, and you want to fire all of your workers from Michigan and Ohio and all these places that I won, for good reason, it’s not going to happen that way anymore.
You want to move your plant and you think, as an example, you’re going to build that plant in Mexico and you’re going to make your air conditioners or your cars or whatever you’re making, and you’re going to sell it through what will be a very, very strong border. Not a weak border like it is, we don’t even have a border. It’s an open sieve.
But you’re going to sell through a very strong border. Not going to happen. You’re going to pay a very large border tax. So if you want to move to another country and if you want to fire all of our great American workers that got you there in the first place, you can move from Michigan to Tennessee and to North Carolina and South Carolina. You can move from South Carolina back to Michigan.
You can do anywhere. You’ve got a lot of states at play. A lot of competition. So it’s not like, oh, gee, I’m taking the competition away. You’ve got a lot of places you can move. And I don’t care, as along as it’s within the United States, the borders of the United States.
There will be a major border tax on these companies that are leaving and getting away with murder. And if our politicians had what it takes, they would have done this years ago. And you’d have millions more workers right now in the United States that are—96 million really wanting a job and they can’t get. You know that story. The real number. That’s the real number.
So, that’s the way it is. OK.
Excerpt 2:
REPORTER: And on the border fence, it now appears clear U.S. taxpayers will have to pay for it up front. What is your plan to…
TRUMP: That’s not clear at all. OK.
QUESTION: … to get Mexico to pay for it?
TRUMP: I’ve got it. Do you have any more?
On the fence. It’s not a fence. It’s a wall. You just misreported it. We’re going to build a wall. I could wait about a year-and-a-half until we finish our negotiations with Mexico, which will start immediately after we get to office, but I don’t want to wait. Mike Pence is leading an effort to get final approvals through various agencies and through Congress for the wall to begin.
I don’t feel like waiting a year or a year-and-a-half. We’re going to start building. Mexico in some form, and there are many different forms, will reimburse us and they will reimburse us for the cost of the wall. That will happen, whether it’s a tax or whether it’s a payment, probably less likely that it’s a payment. But it will happen.
So, remember this, OK? I would say we are going to build a wall and people would go crazy. I would then say, who is going to pay for the wall? And people would all scream out, 25,000, 30,000 people, because nobody has ever had crowds like Trump has had. You know that. You don’t like to report that, but that’s OK.
OK, now he agrees. Finally, he agrees.
But I say who is going to pay for the wall? And they will scream out, “Mexico.”
Now, reports went out last week, oh, Mexico is not going to pay for the wall because of a reimbursement. What’s the difference? I want to get the wall started. I don’t want to wait a year-and-a-half until I make my deal with Mexico. And we probably will have a deal sooner than that.
And by the way, Mexico has been so nice, so nice. I respect the government of Mexico. I respect the people of Mexico. I love the people of Mexico. I have many people from Mexico working for me. They’re phenomenal people.
The government of Mexico is terrific. I don’t blame them for what’s happened. I don’t blame them for taking advantage of the United States. I wish our politicians were so smart. Mexico has taken advantage of the United States. I don’t blame the representatives and various presidents, etc., of Mexico. What I say is we shouldn’t have allowed that to happen. It’s not going to happen anymore.
So, in order to get the wall started, Mexico will pay for the wall, but it will be reimbursed.
OK?
