President Trump today threatened to close the U.S. border with Mexico next week, potentially disrupting millions of legal border crossings and billions of dollars in trade if Mexico does not stop immigrants from reaching the United States.
A substantial closure could have an especially heavy impact on cross-border communities from San Diego to South Texas, as well as supermarkets that sell Mexican produce, factories that rely on imported parts, and other businesses across the U.S.
The U.S. and Mexico trade about $1.7 billion in goods daily, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which said closing the border would be “an unmitigated economic debacle” that would threaten 5 million American jobs.
A border shutdown would also disrupt tourism and commerce between the United States and its third-largest trade partner, which totaled $612 billion last year.
“We’d be looking at losses worth billions of dollars,” said Kurt Honold, head of CCE, a business group in Tijuana, Mexico, in response to Trump’s threat. “It’s obvious he’s not measuring what he says.”
A shutdown could lead to factory closings on both sides of the border, industry officials say, as the automobiles and medical sectors have woven international supply chains into their business models.
“We are Siamese twins – we are so entangled together,” said Alan Russell, chief executive of the Tecma Group, an outsourcing firm.
But Trump said today he doesn’t care.
“There’s a very good likelihood that I’ll be closing the border next week, and that will be just fine with me,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Trump has repeatedly said he would close the U.S. border with Mexico during his two years in office and has not followed through.
But this time the government says it is struggling to deal with a surge of asylum seekers from countries in Central America who travel through Mexico.
Trump’s latest declaration came after Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said his country was doing its part to fight migrant smuggling.
Criminal networks charge thousands of dollars a person to move migrants through Mexico, increasingly in large groups toward remote sections of the border.
“We want to have a good relationship with the government of the United States,” Lopez Obrador said today. He added: “We are going to continue helping so that the migratory flow, those who pass through our country, do so according to the law, in an orderly way.”
Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign relations secretary, tweeted that his country “doesn’t act based on threats” and is “the best neighbor” the U.S. could have.
Arizona’s Republican Gov. Doug Ducey has not joined Trump in calling it an emergency at the border.
“Nowhere is that more evident than with our number one trading partner, times four, Mexico,” said Ducey during his inauguration speech in January. “I’m proud to say we’re more than just neighbors with Sonora, we’re partners.”
Sonoran Governor Claudia Artemiza Pavlovich Arellano was in the audience applauding him.
As president, Trump has legal authority to close particular ports of entry, but he could be open to a legal challenge if he decided to close all of them immediately, said Stephen Legomsky, a former chief counsel at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under President Obama.