Mexican president: ‘No way’ nation will pay for border wall

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto reiterated Sunday that he is ready to work with whoever the next U.S. president is but said Mexico will not be paying for a border wall. 

{mosads}“There is no way to have Mexico pay,” Peña Nieto told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview that aired Sunday. “There is no way that Mexico can pay [for] a wall like that.”

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has called for the construction of a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico as a way to stop illegal immigration. 

Peña Nieto also criticized Trump’s comments about Mexicans, saying he “cannot agree with such a generalization for Mexicans” being rapists, drug dealers and criminals.

He put further distance between himself and Trump while discussing trade deals. 

Peña Nieto said the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will strengthen ties with Washington and Ottawa and that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is proof that trade created and saved jobs and boosted all three economies. 

He called NAFTA “a win-win mechanism” that has enabled the United States, Canada and Mexico to protect their manufacturing sectors and millions of jobs.

“And I think the results are there,” Peña Nieto said.

Trump has a different opinion.

In recent weeks, he’s repeatedly said he will demand either a renegotiation or withdrawal from NAFTA and the TPP, moves that would wreak havoc on the trading partnerships and cause tariffs to rise on imports from those countries and exports from the United States.

But Peña Nieto said Mexico will be “very respectful to whomever is elected.”

“We want to build a positive and constructive relation among Mexico and to whomever becomes president of United States.”