Day 870: There are farces, there are lies and then there’s Donald Trump’s ‘new deal’ with Mexico

Despite Trump’s claims, it’s neither new nor a deal.

Donald Trump threatened tariffs on Mexican good should a deal regarding immigration not get made between the two nations. Virtually no one, including Republicans, wanted these tariffs to be implemented. If Trump did implement them, he faced the real possibility of an embarrassing rebuff via a veto-proof majority against him.

So painting himself into a corner — promising unpopular tariffs or forging an impossible deal — from which there was no escape, he did what he does best: he pretended there was a solution and did everything possible to sell it.

He has lied about the value of summits or agreements with Kim Jong-un. He has lied about deals with China and Japan and the European Union. So late Friday he concocted a story about a deal with Mexico.

So desperate was he to push the idea of a deal, Trump kept repeating himself Saturday on Twitter, with laughably vague and false assertions.

Mexico already buys large quantities of agricultural products from the U.S. As the U.S.’s third biggest trade partner, agricultural products are some of the U.S.’s biggest exports to its southern neighbor. And despite Trump’s all caps tweet, Mexico hasn’t actually agreed to any type of new farm deal.

So what is this “new deal” exactly?

Well, for starters, it’s not a “deal.” It’s a declaration that is only a few paragraphs. And even that includes general discussion about further action and regional strategy.

Furthermore, there’s nothing “new” in the declaration.

The deal to avert tariffs that President Trump announced with great fanfare on Friday night consists largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with the United States over the past several months, according to officials from both countries who are familiar with the negotiations.

Friday’s joint declaration says Mexico agreed to the “deployment of its National Guard throughout Mexico, giving priority to its southern border.” But the Mexican government had already pledged to do that in March during secret talks in Miami between Kirstjen Nielsen, then the secretary of homeland security, and Olga Sanchez, the Mexican secretary of the interior, the officials said.

The centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s deal was an expansion of a program to allow asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while their legal cases proceed. But that arrangement was reached in December in a pair of painstakingly negotiated diplomatic notes that the two countries exchanged. Ms. Nielsen announced the Migrant Protection Protocols during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee five days before Christmas.

New parts that the Trump administration tried to negotiate failed.

And over the past week, negotiators failed to persuade Mexico to accept a “safe third country” treaty that would have given the United States the legal ability to reject asylum seekers if they had not sought refuge in Mexico first.

So the “new deal” with Mexico buying “large quantities of agricultural product” could be more aptly described as “U.S. and Mexico declare previously existing ideas to help Trump save face.”

870 days in, 592 to go

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