When President Donald Trump announced last week that he would not be imposing tariffs on Mexican goods being imported to the United States as he had threatened, he said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government had agreed to major concessions on refugee policy.
The New York Times quickly pointed out that the concessions the governments had agreed to had already been established months before, making it look like Trump had simply backed down from an empty threat. But Trump insisted this was wrong. There was, he said, a secret additional agreement with Mexico that included even more significant concessions.
And on Tuesday, Trump even waved around a folded piece of paper in front of reporters, claiming it was the secret deal. One intrepid reporter took a close-up shot of the paper, and because of the sunlight shining through it, parts of the text were visible. I suggested that, though it wasn’t entirely clear what the deal amounted to, the visible text indicated it was mostly vague promises.
View the complete June 14 article by Cody Fenwick from AlterNet on the National Memo website here.