“The only thing, frankly, better and less drastic than closing the border is tariff the cars coming in, and I will do it,” 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.”
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 Trump followed through with it. Nearly $1.7 billion of goods and services flow across the U.S.-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.
Trump’s latest reversal came after Republican lawmakers and his own economic advisers warned him of the consequences of the move. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Senate majority leader, said, “I would hope that 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.
Talking to reporters at the White House on Thursday, 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.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.