A former top Mexican diplomat believes Donald Trump could get Mexico to pay for a border wall. Easily.
“If [Trump] really wants Mexico to pay for the wall, he has many ways of getting many Mexicans to pay for the wall,” Jorge Castañeda, Mexico’s former foreign affairs secretary, told the Hudson Institute this week, according to The Weekly Standard.
Trump could “increase the fee for visas, which is a decision made by the State Department, not by Congress” or “increase the toll on the bridges [between the two countries] . . . again, not done by Congress,” Castañeda said.
“There are ways of doing it … transaction fees, commissions, special fees etc.”
A key plank to Trump’s signature immigration platform has been to build a wall along the US-Mexico border — and to have Mexico pay for it.
The mogul has been ridiculed for suggesting he might actually be able to carry out that policy.
As Mexico’s former president, Vicente Fox, said in May, “I’m not going to pay for the f**king wall … And please don’t take out the f**king full word.”
Castañeda’s comments suggest that if Trump were to win the presidential election, he in fact would be able to carry out his signature policy.