Mexican legislator seeks to ban country from paying for Trump’s wall

A left-wing Mexican legislator is proposing legislation that would ban the country from paying for Donald Trump’s proposed border wall.

Armando Ríos Piter, a member of the lower house of Mexico’s congress with the Party of the Democratic Revolution, is expected to present the bill for consideration Tuesday, the Financial Times reported. 

{mosads}The bill also stipulates that all Mexican treaties with the United States — including the 1948 Mexican Cession — would become open for review if the Republican nominee were to win the White House and make good on his vow to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

“This is the first step towards establishing a public policy about how Mexico should react in the face of a threat,” said Ríos Piter.

Trump visited Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto last week. Peña Nieto said he made clear to Trump that Mexico would not pay for a U.S.-Mexico border wall. The Republican said they hadn’t discussed the issue.

“We will build a great wall along the southern border, and Mexico will pay for the wall, 100 percent. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for it,” Trump said in a speech Wednesday that focused on his immigration proposals.

The Republican has said he would cut off the money immigrants send back to Mexico if the country does not voluntarily fund the proposal. If that plan were put in place, it could spur retaliation from Mexico.

“Mexico would recover that same amount through a tax on transfers American persons made from Mexico to the United States,” said Agustín Barrios Gómez, a proponent of the bill and former legislator, in an email to The Hill.

Mexicans in the United States sent nearly $24.8 billion to their family members in Mexico in 2015, according to Banco de Mexico, the country’s equivalent of the Federal Reserve.

U.S. exports to Mexico totaled $267.2 billion in 2015, according to the U.S. Trade Representative.

On trade, Trump has promised to renegotiate NAFTA or cancel it altogether if negotiations fail. 

“The idea is that the relationship between the two countries is structured on friendship and trust. To break a treaty, originally proposed by the United States, now so important to Mexico, would be seen as an act in bad faith and the relationship would have to be rethought,” said Barrios Gómez.

Barrios Gómez said his proposal would not automatically revoke existing deals, but rather open them up for review if NAFTA were unilaterally rescinded.

The United States and Mexico currently have 75 bilateral treaties in place, according to The Financial Times.

They include a series of border treaties, most importantly the 1848 deal that ended the Mexican-American War, ceding more than half of Mexican territory to the United States in exchange for $15 million.