US President Donald Trump said today that Mexico will buy “large quantities of agricultural products” from the US, apparently as part of the bilateral agreement reached on Friday to avoid the imposition of US tariffs on all Mexican products.
“Mexico has agreed to start buying immediately large quantities of agricultural products from our large patriotic farmers,” although this point was not clearly established in the declaration on the migration agreement reached on Friday night, , Trump wrote in capital letters early on his official Twitter account.
However, the president already stated, in another tweet on Friday, that if an agreement was reached with Mexico, the neighboring country “would begin to buy farm and agricultural products at very high levels, starting immediately.”
Mexico is already the second country that buys the most agricultural products from the United States, after Canada, according to the Office of the Foreign Trade Representative of the United States.
In 2018, US agricultural exports to Mexico amounted to 20,000 million dollars, and among the most sold products were corn, soybeans, and pork and beef, according to the USTR.
But Trump has insisted on boosting exports of agricultural products to those countries with which the US maintains a trade deficit, such as Mexico or China, and has used its tariff threat to reach agreements in that regard.
The Mexican government has not confirmed, however, that it has committed to import more agricultural products, and the agreement described on Friday by both parties only touched on the issue of migration.
That pact contemplates that the US return to Mexico all asylum seekers, a group that makes up the bulk of the current wave of immigration, while waiting for their petitions to be resolved in US immigration courts.
“Mexico will try hard, and if they do, this will be a very successful agreement for both the United States and Mexico!” Trump also wrote on Twitter today.
The president also stressed that the agreement involves the deployment of 6,000 troops from Mexico’s National Guard to the border of that country with Guatemala, and stressed that “right now there are few” of those troops.
Tariffs on Mexican products were suspended as a result of the agreement that was going to go into effect on Monday at a rate of 5%, and would increase gradually each month to reach 25% in October.
