I’ll seal off the entire Mexico border, says Trump
President in standoff with Democrats as the federal government shutdown enters second week
DONALD TRUMP yesterday threatened to seal off the entire Us-mexico border if Congress did not approve funding for a border wall. The US president’s comments came as the federal government shutdown entered its seventh day, with Mr Trump failing to come to a budget agreement with his Democratic opponents in the Congress.
The continued standoff meant a quarter of the US government would be likely to remain closed into 2019, when the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives.
The shutdown began on Saturday after Democrats rejected the president’s demand for $5billion (£3.93billion) for a border wall. “We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the wall and also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our country is saddled with,” Mr Trump posted on Twitter yesterday.
Analysts warned that closing the border would cost hundreds of millions of dollars a day, with an estimated $558billion (£440billion) in goods going in both directions last year. A closure would cause chaos for the nearly half a million people who enter the US through its southern border each day.
An agreement on border funding will be the first big confrontation between Mr Trump and the Democrats, who won a majority in the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections and oppose the wall. Refusing to back down, Mr Trump reissued threats to shut off aid to the three Central American countries from which most migrants attempting to enter the US originate. “Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are doing nothing for the United States but taking our money,” he complained in one of a series of tweets.
The president signalled he was in no rush for a resolution, welcoming a fight as he headed toward his own bid for reelection in 2020. Yesterday, Mick Mulvaney, acting White House chief of staff, said: “There’s not a single Democrat talking to the president about this,” admitting that the shutdown was expected “to go on for a while”.
Nancy Pelosi, Democrat leader in the House, vowed to end the shutdown as soon as she took control of the chamber on Jan 3. But passing legislation would be difficult as the Republicans still hold the Senate and Mr Trump’s signature is needed to make any bill law.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Hunt gave a withering assessment of Mr Trump’s approach to world affairs as he insisted the UK would not be complacent about the Middle East. Despite Mr Trump claiming the terror group Isil had been “largely defeated”, the Foreign Secretary said the UK assessed the war as not yet over. “President Trump makes a speciality out of talking in very black and white terms about what’s happening in the world,” he told the BBC.