Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador has pushed back at President Donald Trump’s move to impose a blanket 5 percent tariff on all Mexican goods.
In a pointed letter released Thursday, López Obrador lashed out at Trump for what he described as the U.S. president’s “turning the United States, overnight, from a country of brotherly love for immigrants from around the world, to a bolted space, where there’s stigmatizing, mistreatment, abuse, persecution, and a denial of the right to justice to those who seek — with sacrifice and hard work — to live free from misery.”
López Obrador said that “social problems are not solved with duties or coercive measures,” and alluded to the United States’ history as a nation of immigrants: “The Statue of Liberty is not an empty symbol.”
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He added in the letter, which he provided a link to on his Twitter account, that in contrast to Trump’s approach, Mexico is doing its part to avoid migration through its territory as much as possible, without violating human rights.
“People don’t leave their homelands for pleasure but out of necessity,” the Mexican leader said. – READ MORE