Mexico hopeful of avoiding tariffs over immigration

Mexico’s top diplomat on Tuesday voiced optimism that his team of negotiators will convince the Trump administration not to impose a 5 percent tariff on exports from his country as scheduled on Monday.

“The higher [possibility] I see is that we will be able to find a negotiation, therefore I’ll suppose that we’ll be able to avoid the imposition of tariffs,” Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said Tuesday.

President Trump has threatened to impose the tariffs on Monday and raise them to 25 percent by October if Mexico does not take significant steps to deal with the migration of Central Americans through Mexico to the United States.

{mosads}Speaking in London at a press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday, Trump said the tariffs would go into effect as planned.

“I think it’s most likely that the tariffs go on,” Trump said. Addressing deliberations by Republicans on a measure that could limit his tariff power, Trump said “I don’t think they will do that. I think if they do, it’s foolish.”

Ebrard is meeting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other high-level Trump administration officials Wednesday to discuss the tariffs.

He arrived in Washington over the weekend, leading a delegation that includes two other Cabinet officials, in response to the White House announcement of tariffs linked to migration.

Ebrard’s team has spent the last four days laying groundwork for the meeting with Pompeo, where immigration policy, not the tariffs, is expected to lead the conversation.

“We understand the dialogue is about migration, but there’s a tariff in the middle, we didn’t put it there,” he said. “Common sense says it doesn’t make sense to have a tariff discussion right now when an agreement about migration can be reached in the next days.”