Mexican Senator Armando Rios Piter is expected to propose legislation this week that would empower Mexico to retaliate in the event that an elected Trump fulfills his threats against Mexico and its nationals in the US.
The Senator’s bill follows growing dissatisfaction with President Enrique Peña Nieto’s leadership, after a meeting between the Mexican President and Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump early this month. The September 1 meeting was expected to be controversial given Trump’s derogatory comments about Mexicans and his proposal to build a wall along the US border with Mexico and compel Mexico to pay for its construction.
But apparently the wall – which is one of Trump’s most talked about policy positions – was not discussed in the meeting. When Trump returned to the US, he was quick to assure his supporters in Arizona that, “Mexico will pay for the wall, 100 per cent. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for the wall.” Meanwhile President Peña Nieto, whose time in office has been swamped by scandal and dissatisfaction over persistently high crime rates and incidents of corruption, faced renewed criticism for pandering to the Presidential Candidate.
Senator Rios Piter told the Telegraph the meeting was “a historic error” and accused Trump of using Mexico as a campaign tool. The Senator says he plans to introduce a bill to guard Mexico’s interests in the event of a Trump win in the November Presidential election.
The details of the bill are sketchy at the moment, but it looks like an exercise in pure tit-for-tat.
Trump’s proposal to force Mexico to pay for the construction of a border wall includes threats to stop the transfer of private funds from the US to Mexico, cancel the US visas of Mexican nationals and increase trade tariffs on goods being imported from Mexico to the US. Reuters reports that a preliminary summary of Senator Rios Piter’s bill states, “In cases where the property/assets of (our) fellow citizens or companies are affected by a foreign government, as Donald Trump has threatened, the Mexican government should proportionally expropriate assets and properties of foreigners from that country on our territory.”
Separate to his promises to build a Mexico-funded wall, Trump has also said he’d like to tear up the North American Free Trade Pact (NAFTA) between Canada, the US and Mexico, which he says is hurting US manufacturing. Under Senator Rios Piter’s bill, the cancellation of NAFTA would trigger an examination of Mexico’s commitment to all bi-national treaties with the US, including the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ended the Mexican-American War and ceded Texas, California and parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming to the US.
Senator Rios Piter expects to introduce his bill to the Senate floor this week. Although the Senator’s center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution and other left parties hold less than a quarter of Senate seats, he is confident his bill will get strong support.
“We can’t take a partisan view of this,” Senator Rios Piter said. “All parties in the Senate are in agreement that Mexico needs to stand up for itself and strengthen its relationship with the United States. We want to shut Trump’s mouth, which has been spewing this hateful speech.”