Lehua La’a
President Donald Trump ran on a campaign promise to “build a great wall and have Mexico pay for it.” During his campaign Trump estimated the wall would cost between $8-12 billion. However, experts say a wall covering 2,000 miles of rugged terrain would actually cost a minimum of $25 billion according to Bernstein Investment Research, without including maintenance, security or video surveillance that would keep watch of the wall.
Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto adamantly refuses to Trump’s demand to pay for the wall and has gone as far as canceling his visit to the White House to demonstrate his stance. If Mexico refuses to play ball with the U.S., how will the Great Wall be paid for?
According to Tim Casey, a veteran of Colorado Mesa University’s political science department, the wall can be paid for in two ways. The first would be a tariff, which has questionable legalities due to the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA).
Unless the Trump Administration chooses to withdraw from NAFTA, it would be nearly impossible to institute the proposed 20 percent tax on all goods from Mexico.
If President Trump establishes a tariff it is unlikely that the Mexican economy would be able to absorb a 20 percent increase in operating costs; so the costs would then be pushed to the consumer.
American consumers would pay a higher price for imported goods to pay for the wall instead of forcing the Mexican government to do so.
The other mechanism that can be used is ‘remittance,’ which is money that Mexican nationals make here in the U.S. and send home. This method is less direct on consumers which seems more appealing but also has questionable legalities. Most of this money has already been taxed by social security. In essence, the Trump Administration would be double-taxing Mexican federal money.
For some, a wall seems like common sense: We keep our property behind lock and key to hinder those from taking our belongings; why wouldn’t we protect our nation with the same concept? Despite the overwhelming evidence that illegal immigration from Mexico is declining, roughly 37 percent of Americans still support Trump’s Wall according to Five Thirty Eight.
“The bigger issue is the fragility of the Mexican economy: The Peso has fallen significantly in value since Trump has taken office. Mexico has far less capacity to handle the $20 billion cost than the U.S. does. Theoretically, if Mexico paid for this wall, it could slow the economy to the point of bankruptcy,” Casey said. “And if Mexico goes bankrupt, the wall will have the exact opposite effect of what it was built to do: It will create floods of people coming into the United States looking for jobs rather than keeping them out.”
So let me get this straight, if we create ‘A Great Wall’ that would cost at least $25 billion and, ‘force Mexico to pay for it,’ we could bankrupt the Mexican economy. In doing so, we would cause an influx of immigrants to the United States which would defeat the purpose of the wall in the first place. That’s all assuming we manage to make them pay for it instead of footing the bill ourselves. It doesn’t seem very great to me.
