The president of Mexico called donald trump “a friend” on Friday and said he would write to the former US president to warn him against promising to close the border or blaming migrants for bringing drugs into the United States.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called Trump, president from 2017 to 2021 and again the Republican nominee for this fall’s presidential election, “a man of intelligence and vision,” despite Trump’s repeated calls to close the two countries’ border.
Mexicans were offended in 2015 when then-candidate Trump claimed that, in many cases, immigrants arriving in the U.S. illegally it included “criminals, drug dealers, rapists.”
And Mexico was shocked in 2019 when Trump as president threatened to close the border “for a long time” unless Mexican authorities prevented migrants from crossing. López Obrador said that the economies of the two countries are so interconnected that they wouldn’t support closure for even a month.
López Obrador said that, in a letter he intends to send next week, “I will prove to you that migrants do not transport drugs to the United States”, adding that “closing the border will not solve anything and, in any case, this cannot be done.”
“They wouldn’t last a month with the border closed,” he said, referring to U.S. automakers and manufacturers who depend on a steady, uninterrupted supply of parts and finished goods for their factories on both sides of the border.
López Obrador also addressed growing unease in the United States over the massive relocation of North American car companies to lower-wage factories in Mexico.
López Obrador stated that moving automobile production back to the United States “would mean that, on average, each automobile sold would cost US citizens between 15,000 and 20,000 dollars more.”
Despite Trump’s frequent friction and belligerent statements, the two leaders had an apparently friendly relationship between 2018 and 2020, with López Obrador agreeing to use the Mexican National Guard to hinder the passage of migrants from third countries to the US border. . He also did this during the current US administration.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
