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Mexico

From the opening salvo of his campaign, the United States's relationship with Mexico and its people has been front and center. Very few moments in the 2016 campaign were more iconic than his opening remarks about Mexican people crossing the border: "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists." (Source: Time)

The tension Trump has created covers substantial ground, from humanitarian and immigration issues, to trade policy and infrastructure spending. 

See also Mexico Wall.

Timeline

2015.06.25Univision cuts ties with Donald Trump's Miss USA pageant over racist remarks. latimes.com (See also 2016 Campaign, Mexican Americans, Feuds, Trump Business)
2015.06.28Trump says he will force the people of Mexico to build a border wall. msnbc.com (See also 2016 Campaign, Mexican Americans)
2015.07.17Trump calls for boycott of Mexico. nypost.com (See also 2016 Campaign)
2015.08.05Donald Trump: "Mexico will pay for wall because I say so." cnn.com (See also 2016 Campaign)
2016.02.25Here is what would happen in Trump's first 100 days if he beats a Democratic nominee on November 9, 2016. theguardian.com (See also First 100 Days, Foreign Policy, Domestic Policy, Supreme Court, Vice-President, Guantánamo, Immigration, Syria, China, Mexico Wall)
2016.05.04What Trump says his presidency would look like, including a wall design, an immigration ban on Muslims, an audit of the Federal Reserve, and plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act by the end of his First 100 Days. nytimes.com (See also First 100 Days, Affordable Care Act, Immigration, Mexico Wall)
2016.11.17Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters group urges Canadian government to prioritize U.S. over Mexico if Trump ends NAFTA. reuters.com (See also Canada)
2016.12.28Mexico eyes border, migration as leverage in talks with Trump reuters.com
2017.01.06Analysts say Donald Trump's tweets are weakening the Mexican peso forbes.com
2017.01.06Former Mexican President Vicente Fox Quesada tweets "Trump may ask whoever he wants, but still neither myself nor Mexico are going to pay for his racist monument. Another promise he can't keep." twitter.com (See also Mexico Wall)
2017.01.06Trump tweets "The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!" twitter.com (See also Mexico Wall)
2017.01.06Trump, reversing field on a campaign promise, says American taxpayers will pay for the Mexico wall, with Mexico reimbursing the U.S. later. nytimes.com (See also Mexico Wall)
2017.01.08Trump's stances on immigration and trade create problems for President of Mexico nytimes.com
2017.01.11In a confirmation hearing, Tillerson expresses views at odds with President-elect Donald Trump's positions on key foreign policy issues like nuclear proliferation, trade deals, climate change and relations with Mexico. reuters.com (See also Rex Tillerson, Climate Change)
2017.01.16Homeland Security nominee Kelly says border wall "will not do the job." latimes.com (See also John Kelly, Department of Homeland Security, Immigrants, Immigration, Mexico Wall)
2017.01.16Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto cancels meeting with Trump in response to executive order to build a border wall. nytimes.com (See also Mexico Wall)
2017.01.16This is the full transcript of Donald Trump’s interview with Michael Gove and Kai Diekmann, former chief editor of the German newspaper Bild. thetimes.co.uk (See also First 100 Days, Germany, United Kingdom, Trade, Syria, Afghanistan, ISIS, Russia, NATO, Iran, Israel, Ireland, European Union, China, Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Muslim Immigration Ban, Muslim Registry)
2017.01.17U.S., Mexico, and Cuba aim to sign agreement determining territorial water rights in oil-rich Eastern Gap of the Gulf Mexico before Trump takes office. fortune.com (See also Cuba)
2017.01.18Commerce nominee and billionaire investor Wilbur Ross vows to make sweeping changes to NAFTA. nytimes.com (See also Wilbur Ross, Canada)
2017.01.25The biggest winners of Trump's border wall are likely to be cement firms and construction workers in Mexico. theguardian.com (See also Mexico Wall)
2017.01.26A rift opens between US and Mexico as Trump presses forward with his wall plan and President Enrique Peña Nieto on Thursday cancels a trip to Washington after emphasizing that Mexico would not finance the wall. washingtonpost.com (See also First 100 Days, Mexico Wall)
The decision comes a day after Trump signed an executive order to start building a wall along the Mexican border.
2017.01.26Mexico’s President Enrique Peã Nieto cancels meeting with Trump over wall executive order. nytimes.com (See also First 100 Days, Mexico Wall)
2017.01.26Sean Spicer quickly backpedals on paying for Wall with 20% tax on Mexican imports. talkingpointsmemo.com (See also Immigration, Mexico Wall, Sean Spicer)
2017.01.26Trump calls for 20% tax on Mexican imports to pay for border wall following Mexican president cancelling summit. theguardian.com (See also First 100 Days, Mexico Wall, Trade, NAFTA)
Reince Priebus later called Trump's 20% tax one of a "buffet of options." Daniel Ikenson, director of the Herbert A Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, said the suggestion had put the US in “dangerous waters”.
2017.01.26Trump proposes a 20% tax on Mexican Imports to pay for a border wall, and supports imposing a 20% tax on all imports. nytimes.com (See also Mexico Wall, Economy)
2017.02.01Trump threatens to send U.S. troops to Mexico to take care of "bad hombres." time.com (See also Presidential Activity)
2017.02.01Trump's phone calls with foreign leaders are not going as smoothly as sanitized official statements imply with him subjecting them to the same version of vitriol he employs against adversaries. washingtonpost.com (See also First 100 Days, Australia)
Trump told Australia’s Turnbull “This was the worst call by far,” and then threatened to send troops into Mexico, in his call with the President.
2017.02.02US president describes a world ‘in trouble’ in speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, amid a growing number of disputes with foreign leaders theguardian.com (See also First 100 Days, Muslim Immigration Ban, Australia, Johnson Amendment, Attacks on Civil Liberties, LGBTQIA, Affordable Care Act, Department of the Treasury, Russia, Yemen, Iran, Mike Pence)
2017.02.03Trump's plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico is facing a major problem: resistance from his own party. cnn.com (See also First 100 Days, Mexico Wall)
2017.02.09Jared Kushner proves to be a shadow diplomat on U.S.-Mexico talks regarding NAFTA and border wall negotiations. washingtonpost.com (See also First 100 Days, Jared Kushner, NAFTA, Mexico Wall)
2017.02.12Mexicans march to protest Trump — but also their own leaders and politicians washingtonpost.com (See also First 100 Days, Mexico Wall)
2017.02.18Trump's rhetoric about a trade war with Mexico triggers a slide in cattle futures making Texas cattle ranchers the first casualties of Trump's trade wars. dallasnews.com (See also Trade)
2017.02.22Rex W. Tillerson arrives in Mexico with twin threats hanging over the frayed relationship between the two nations: Trump’s new orders to round up and deport immigrants who are in the United States illegally, and a separate effort to examine American aid to Mexico for possible use in paying for a border wall. nytimes.com (See also Rex Tillerson, Department of State, First 100 Days, Mexico Wall, Immigration)
2017.02.24Mexican Interior Secretary does not mince words when speaking alongside Rex Tillerson and John Kelly in Mexico City Thursday, saying: "We do not agree on the different measures that recently were stated by the government of the United States (that) affect Mexico." cnn.com (See also First 100 Days, Rex Tillerson, John Kelly, Department of State, Department of Homeland Security)
2017.03.08Mexico cancels sugar export permits to U.S. in trade dispute. reuters.com (See also Trade, First 100 Days)
Mexico has canceled existing sugar export permits to the United States in a dispute over the pace of shipments, according to a letter seen by Reuters, in a flare-up industry sources said could temporarily disrupt supplies.
2017.06.22Trump claimed Mexico is the second deadliest country in the world. It's not. buzzfeed.com (See also Mexico Wall, Unpresidential Behavior, False Statements)
2017.08.02Trump is apparently lying about two phone calls during which he claims officials called him to offer him praise - one from the President of Mexico about immigration, and another from the Boy Scouts. thinkprogress.org (See also Assaults on Facts, False Statements, Immigration, Unpresidential Behavior)
2017.08.03The Washington Post on Thursday published transcripts of Trump’s January phone calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia — and they include plenty of bizarre, surreal, and stunning moments. buzzfeed.com (See also Foreign Policy, Mexico Wall, Unpresidential Behavior, False Statements)
2017.08.03Trump made building a wall along the southern U.S. border and forcing Mexico to pay for it core pledges of his campaign, but as transcripts of his first White House call with Mexico’s president reveal, Trump described his vow to charge Mexico as a growing political problem, pressuring the Mexican leader to stop saying publicly that his government would never pay. washingtonpost.com (See also Mexico Wall, Foreign Policy)
2017.09.11Mexico withdrew its offer of aid to the US to help victims of Hurricane Harvey, after Trump did not acknowledge nor offer condolences to Mexico after their magnitude 8.1 earthquake where at least 95 people died. latimes.com (See also Unpresidential Behavior)
2018.02.24Tentative plans for Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to make his first visit to the White House to meet with Donald Trump were scuttled this week after a testy call between the two leaders ended in an impasse over Trump’s promised border wall, according to U.S. and Mexican officials. washingtonpost.com (See also Immigration, Mexico Wall)
2018.02.27Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter. washingtonpost.com (See also Jared Kushner, Nepotism, Corruption, Foreign Policy, China, Israel)
Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said.
2018.04.05Donald Trump ditched his “boring” prepared remarks at a tax roundtable in West Virginia, and instead repeated his claim that “millions” of people are voting illegally and boasted that he was right about the threat of Mexican rapists. politico.com (See also False Statements, Voter Fraud, Voter Suppression, Unpresidential Behavior)
2018.05.16Donald Trump lashed out at undocumented immigrants during a White House meeting on Wednesday, warning in front of news cameras that dangerous people were clamoring to breach the country’s borders and branding such people “animals.” nytimes.com (See also Immigration, Unpresidential Behavior, Nationalism)
2018.05.31Donald Trump will level steel and aluminum tariffs on three of the US’s closest trading partners at midnight Thursday, overruling his own party and stoking fears of a trade war. buzzfeed.com (See also Economy, Trade, NAFTA)
American consumers will almost certainly be hit with higher prices due to the tariffs, and a slew of major industries are warning of tens of thousands of job losses in the US due to increased costs and retaliation from trading partners.
2018.06.05Mexico hit back at the United States, imposing tariffs on around $3 billion worth of American pork, steel, cheese and other goods in response to the Trump administration’s steel and aluminum levies, further straining relations between the two countries as they struggle to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement. nytimes.com (See also NAFTA, Trade)
2018.06.09Donald Trump said that he had instructed U.S. officials to withdraw support for a joint statement with other members of the G7 nations he had backed just hours earlier, saying the United States would not join after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly criticized Trump’s trade policy. washingtonpost.com (See also Trade, Reversals, Russia)
Trump did not specify which of Trudeau's statements he considered false.
2018.06.26More than a dozen states sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its separation of migrant children and parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, saying Donald Trump’s order ending the breakups was illusory. reuters.com (See also Legal Activity, Immigration)
2018.08.27Donald Trump said that the United States and Mexico had reached an accord to revise key portions of the North American Free Trade Agreement and would finalize it within days, suggesting he was ready to jettison Canada from the trilateral trade pact if the country did not get on board quickly. nytimes.com (See also NAFTA, Trade, Canada)
2018.10.22Despite Donald Trump’s repeated threats to involve the US military in closing or bolstering the southern border from an approaching migrant caravan, the Pentagon said it had not received any new orders to deploy troops. buzzfeednews.com (See also False Statements, Immigration, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense)
2018.10.29Homeland Security and Pentagon officials said Monday that they will send 5,200 troops, military helicopters and giant spools of razor wire to the Mexican border in the coming days to brace for the arrival of Central American migrants President Trump is calling “an invasion.” washingtonpost.com (See also Department of Homeland Security, Immigration, Racism)
The US soon will have more troops along the Mexican border than it has fighting in Iraq and Syria.
2018.10.31Donald Trump now says that he would deploy as many as 15,000 military personnel to the border with Mexico in response to caravans of Central American migrants making their way northward, doubling the figure Pentagon officials have announced would be operating there. washingtonpost.com (See also Immigration, Racism, False Statements)
If the deployment reaches 15,000 troops, it would be roughly equivalent to the size of the U.S. military’s presence in Afghanistan and three times the size of the presence in Iraq. Already, the deployment is believed to be the largest of its kind in more than a century.
2018.11.05Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford said Monday that the US military will not be "involved in the actual mission of denying people entry to the United States." cnn.com (See also Immigration, Department of Homeland Security)
When asked about the border mission for active-duty troops, Dunford said the military will not be coming into contact with migrants traveling toward the border.
2018.11.08The Trump administration introduced new measures to deny asylum to migrants who enter the country illegally, invoking national security powers to curb long-standing humanitarian protections for foreigners arriving on American soil, which now apply indefinitely. washingtonpost.com (See also Immigration, Nationalism, Department of Homeland Security)
2018.11.12Unaccompanied children who cross the US–Mexico border illegally will no longer have the right to apply for asylum under new changes instituted by the Trump administration, a shift in previous practice and a major restriction to how minors apply for protections in the country. buzzfeednews.com (See also Immigration, Racism, Department of Homeland Security)
2018.11.24The Trump administration is working on a plan with Mexico’s incoming government to remake U.S. border policy by requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims move through U.S. courts washingtonpost.com (See also Immigration, Immigrants)
2018.12.13A 7-year-old girl from Guatemala died of dehydration and shock after she was taken into Border Patrol custody last week for crossing from Mexico into the United States illegally with her father and a large group of migrants along a remote span of New Mexico desert. washingtonpost.com (See also Immigration, Department of Homeland Security)
2018.12.19A federal judge struck down most of a Trump administration policy that turned away asylum seekers who claimed to suffer domestic violence or gang violence. politico.com (See also Immigration, Legal Activity, Reversals)
2018.12.20The Trump administration, mired in a battle with Congress over funding of a border wall, announced that the United States would begin requiring people seeking asylum at the southwest border to wait in Mexico for a court ruling on their cases. nytimes.com (See also Immigration, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, Mike Pompeo)