An insider account of how the president pressed ahead with his plan, despite multiple warnings.
President Trump, confronted with the latest surge of migration that threatens his tough-on-the-border image, was ready to launch his newest plan — across-the-board tariffs on Mexican goods, likely to wound the healthy economy and trigger protests from parts of his own party.
But during a Wednesday night huddle inside the Oval Office, Trump was running into a roadblock: his own advisers.
Calling in from his travels in the Middle East, presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner argued against imposing unilateral tariffs, warning that the move could imperil the prospects of ratifying a new trade deal with Mexico and Canada, according to officials familiar with the meeting. Kushner, a senior White House adviser, insisted that he could still work directly with Mexico to resolve the burgeoning migration crisis.
In the Oval Office with Trump, U. S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer also lobbied against the tariffs, similarly concerned that the drastic threat against the United States’ third-largest trading partner would upend the fragile trade agreement, which still requires Congress’s blessing.
But Trump was unmoved by the arguments and repeatedly said Mexico had to do more, one person with knowledge of the meeting said. The tariffs, he declared, were going to be announced no matter what.
Roughly 24 hours later, Trump would go public with his latest attempt to stop the migration of Central Americans arriving in record numbers at the southern border, seeking to punish Mexico by gradually increasing tariffs on the entire universe of its goods.
This account of Trump’s decision to open a new front in his battles over immigration and trade — and the ensuing fallout — is based on interviews with 14 White House officials, lawmakers, congressional aides and others familiar with the issue, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The tactic sowed disruption on multiple fronts Friday as top Mexican officials rushed to Washington to defuse the threat, the stock market tumbled on the news and administration officials offered little explanation of how increasing the prices of goods from Mexico would stop illegal immigration at the border, a goal that has eluded multiple administrations.
“He’s trying to solve a humanitarian situation by creating economic chaos,” said Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.), whose state would be devastated in any trade standoff with Mexico. “He doesn’t have a coherent strategy for how to deal with any of this stuff.”
Still, the chorus of objections that enveloped the White House did little to discourage Trump, who was infuriated after more than 1,000 migrants from Central America surrendered early Wednesday to U. S. officials near El Paso. That development — on the same day that former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III delivered an in-person statement on the conclusions of his Russia investigation — marked the largest group of migrants taken into custody by U.
