Mexico President AMLO Says Trump Border Wall Threats Just Campaign Talk

(Bloomberg) -- Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador dismissed US presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s talk of a wall at the Mexican border as campaign rhetoric, in a rare TV interview with US network CBS’s 60 Minutes program.

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Lopez Obrador, also known as AMLO, said “no” when asked if he thought Trump would build the wall, pointing to his working relationship with the former US president and to the successful negotiation of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, which he said was “favorable for both countries.”

“We understood each other very well,” he said of Trump in the interview, taped at the National Palace in Mexico City. Lopez Obrador and Trump only discussed the wall once during their time as presidents, over a phone call that was intended to be about the pandemic, he said.

“There was an agreement not to talk about the wall, because we were not going to agree,” he said. On that phone call, Lopez Obrador said, “I told him, I’m going to send you some videos of tunnels from Tijuana to San Diego that pass right under US customs. He stayed quiet and then he started laughing and told me, ‘I can’t win with you.’”

Migration over the US southern border is a flashpoint in the US presidential campaign, with Washington putting pressure on Mexico to work to reduce the number of migrants as border states and major cities come under strain from the influx. The latest discussions between the countries include a plan to ramp up deportation flights to Latin American countries with the promise that they will receive development assistance. Lopez Obrador has also called on the US to deploy $20 billion to support those countries.

Lopez Obrador said that after a request from President Joe Biden last year to contain the flow of migration his government has been “more careful about our southern border.” He has also asked the presidents of Central American countries, Venezuela and Cuba to support curbing the flow of migrants.

However, Lopez Obrador said that to really slow migration, Mexico wants the “root causes to be attended to, to be seriously looked at” rather than relying on “short-term” solutions.

Lopez Obrador’s administration, which is limited to a six-year term, ends in October. The ruling Morena party’s candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, is leading polls with a 24-point advantage over her top rival.

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