The blowup left officials on both sides deeply disappointed that months of constructive negotiations laying the groundwork for a meeting between the presidents and rebuilding trust between the governments had been scuttled in one phone conversation. The presidents were hoping to use Mr. Peña Nieto’s visit to Washington to sign a number of bilateral treaties covering the drug fight, border issues and other matters, and to discuss trade, including the status of their efforts to renegotiate Nafta, the officials said.
By Sunday, both governments were eager to put the best possible face on the squabble, insisting that a meeting was still possible and that relations had not suffered an irreparable blow.
“We enjoy a great relationship with Mexico, and the two administrations have been working for a year to deepen our cooperation across a range of issues including security, immigration, trade and economics,” Michael Anton, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said in a statement.
After the call, Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, spoke with Mr. Peña Nieto, and the two agreed they should keep working on areas of agreement, another administration official said.
Both sides said a possible meeting between the two presidents remained on the table, though not on the timeline or in the style that had been planned.
The confrontation, according to a Mexican official, chilled the warmth and good will that had been built up between the two sides over months of negotiations, and sapped whatever level of trust had been developed after a difficult start to the relationship.
It was not the first time that a disagreement over the wall spoiled the chance for the two presidents to establish a rapport.
In another testy call shortly after Mr. Trump was inaugurated last year, the president pressed Mr. Peña Nieto to stop saying publicly that he would not pay for the wall, saying that would be a precondition for future talks.
“If you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that,” Mr. Trump said, according to a transcript of that call obtained by The Post and posted online last summer.
Mr. Peña Nieto told Mr. Trump during that call that the notion of Mexico paying for the wall was “completely unacceptable for Mexicans,” saying it would also be politically toxic for him to ever accept it. But Mr. Trump told Mr. Peña Nieto that he regarded his vow that Mexico would pay for the wall as a political imperative that he dared not relinquish.
The issue derailed the first attempt by the American and Mexican governments to coordinate a meeting between the two presidents. During a January 2017 visit to Washington by Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray to arrange an announced visit, Mr. Trump took to Twitter to complain that Mexico seemed unwilling to pay for the border wall. Mr. Videgaray suspended all of his meetings and returned home. It was clear to Mexican officials then that there would be no benefit to Mr. Peña Nieto in meeting with Mr. Trump.
The collapse of the new, tentatively scheduled March visit was similarly abrupt. When Mr. Videgaray returned from a visit to Washington 10 days ago, he seemed pleased with his progress. The Mexican Foreign Ministry published a picture of Mr. Videgaray at a working lunch with Mr. Kushner; Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser; and various members of the cabinet, including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
Tucked into the account of the foreign minister’s trip was news that came as a surprise to Mexicans: The two sides had agreed to begin planning a meeting between Mr. Peña Nieto and Mr. Trump. The idea was met with astonishment in Mexico, where Mr. Trump is widely despised for his stream of insults against Mexican immigrants and his insistence on building a wall and sticking Mexico with the bill.
A cartoon last Sunday in the newspaper Reforma asked incredulously why the trip was planned, noting that Mr. Trump had not changed any of his policies, and depicted Mr. Trump smashing a pie into Mr. Peña Nieto’s face.
Before the phone conversation, the two sides had agreed — at the behest of Mr. Trump’s team — that the presidents should avoid talking about the thorny issues that had scuttled their first planned meeting, the Mexican official said, and Trump administration officials told their Mexican counterparts that they would ensure that the president would not dwell on past disagreements.
But during the call, the official said, Mr. Trump lost his temper. A White House official said Mr. Trump had simply become frustrated at Mr. Peña Nieto’s insistence on staying on the subject of the wall.
The Mexican government has more than the damage to Mr. Peña Nieto’s reputation to worry about. His handpicked candidate to succeed him, former Finance Minister José Antonio Meade, is running in third place in the July 1 presidential election. A botched meeting between the two presidents could ricochet and hurt Mr. Meade’s struggling campaign.
The White House and the Mexican government issued separate short statements on Tuesday noting that the two presidents had spoken by phone to exchange condolences over the high school massacre in Parkland, Fla., and a helicopter crash in Oaxaca, Mexico.
The Mexican statement said the governments would continue their bilateral agenda “through the coordinated efforts of their teams.” Mr. Peña Nieto’s spokesman, Eduardo Sánchez, said Saturday night that the Mexican government had nothing else to add to that statement.
The White House said Mr. Trump had “underscored his commitment to expanding cooperation between the United States and Mexico on security, trade and immigration.”
Continue reading the main story
Powered by WPeMatico