By Annie Karni and Zolan Kanno-Youngs
WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Thursday that he planned to give Mexico a “one-year warning” before closing the southern border, retreating on a threat he made last week that he would close the border in the coming days if Mexico did not halt all illegal immigration.
“The only thing, frankly, better and less drastic than closing the border is tariff the cars coming in, and I will do it,” Mr. Trump said, speaking to reporters after a meeting with the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council. “I don’t play games.”
He added: “If the drugs don’t stop, or largely stop, we’re going to put tariffs on Mexico and products, in particular cars — the whole ballgame is cars. And if that doesn’t stop the drugs, we close the border.”
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Mr. Trump cited the flow of drugs over the border as his red line. But last Friday, he announced on Twitter that “if Mexico doesn’t immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States through our Southern Border, I will be CLOSING the Border, or large sections of the Border, next week.”
Since then, the White House has backed off that time frame for an action that would carry severe economic consequences if Mr. Trump followed through with it. Nearly $1.7 billion of goods and services flow across the United States-Mexico border every day, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. About 500,000 legal workers, students, shoppers and tourists also cross the border daily.
Mr. Trump’s latest reversal came after Republican lawmakers and his own economic advisers warned him of the consequences of the move. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, said, “I would hope we would not be doing that sort of thing.”
Furious lobbying by the president’s own economic advisers and a flood of incoming data from outside groups helped to shift the president’s thinking on shutting down the border, a person familiar with the situation said.
Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council; Kevin Hassett, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers; and their deputies communicated to the president how economically disastrous the policy would be, including the effect on daily economic growth starting within 48 hours of the closing.
White House officials had already been vague about the president’s plans to follow through on his threat. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, told reporters this week that Mr. Trump “is not working on a specific timeline.” And on Tuesday, during a meeting with Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, the president said, “I haven’t made that intention known,” when asked specifically about his threat to close the border this week.
Talking to reporters at the White House on Thursday, Mr. Trump said he was going to either close the southern border with America’s third-largest trading partner or “tariff the cars.” He said he would “probably start off with the tariffs.”
But tariffs on cars coming across the southern border would largely drive up costs for American and European automakers — and their customers. Most of the cars and car parts coming from Mexico are intended for multinational automakers, including American car companies like General Motors and Ford.
It is also unclear the degree to which Mr. Trump could impose auto tariffs under the terms of his newly renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement. While the new deal, called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, has yet to be ratified, it includes a provision that exempts Mexican cars from tariffs as long as they stay below a certain level of imports. Only imports above that cap, which is quite high, would be eligible for a levy, the agreement states.
The president is scheduled to travel to Calexico, Calif., on Friday for a photo op at a newly fortified section of the border.
While Mr. Trump backed off his threats to immediately close the southern border, the Department of Homeland Security has reallocated officials working at the ports of entry to handle a surge of unauthorized crossings by large groups of migrants, Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, said on Monday. The move has resulted in long delays and increased traffic at ports of entry.
Ms. Nielsen has also permitted Customs and Border Protection to reallocate as many as 2,000 officials from the ports. The move comes as more Central American families have crossed the border in recent months in search of asylum, leading to overflowing detention facilities and mass releases of migrants into cities along the border.
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