WASHINGTON (AP) President Donald Trump is bragging about a new deal with Mexico that provides for large sales of U.S. farm goods, but it doesnt appear to exist.
In weekend tweets, he announced in all capital letters that he had won the agreement to benefit Americas great patriot farmers, and that U.S. sales would begin immediately. There isnt any sign of that happening, however. Mexican officials denied that anything on agriculture was included in the deal on border security reached Friday to avert Trumps threatened tariffs.
Trump also unfairly placed responsibility on Mexico for the entire U.S. drug problem, even though many of the known drug deaths have nothing to do with the country.
The statements came in a week where the apportioning of credit and blame often went awry in Trumps remarks.
He hailed pristine air quality that isnt, wrongly insisted that the U.S. was paying close to 100% of NATO and told Puerto Ricans they should love him because he got them hurricane aid that hes actually been complaining about for months.
In the Democratic presidential campaign, meantime, Trump was accused of breaking a gun-control promise that in reality he kept.
A look at recent claims and reality:
MEXICO DEAL
TRUMP: MEXICO HAS AGREED TO IMMEDIATELY BEGIN BUYING LARGE QUANTITIES OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT FROM OUR GREAT PATRIOT FARMERS! tweet Saturday, retweeted Sunday.
THE FACTS: Theres no evidence that Mexico agreed to large purchases of agricultural products from the U.S. as part of the deal to avoid tariffs. Nor did the White House provide any details to show such a deal exists.
The joint declaration between the U.S. and Mexico released by the State Department late Friday makes no mention of agriculture. Officials from Mexico deny an agreement was reached on farm goods as part of the talks.
Everything that was negotiated was in the joint statement, said a Mexican official familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. When Mexicos ambassador to the United States, Martha Barcena, was asked repeatedly Sunday on CBS Face the Nation whether there was a new agricultural deal, she demurred, saying such trade between both countries should increase over time.
She referenced instead the potential impact of the separate United States-Mexico-Canada trade deal, which has yet to be approved by Congress.
Is trade on agricultural products going to grow? Yes, it is going to grow, and it is going to grow without tariffs and with USMCA ratification, Barcena said.
According to the office of the United States Trade Representative, Mexico bought $20 billion in U.S. agricultural goods last year, making it the United States second-largest ag export market.
TRUMP: Look, Im dealing with Mexico right now. They send in $500 billion worth of drugs, they kill 100,000 people, they ruin a million families every year if you look at that. Thats really an invasion without the guns. … 100,000 people are killed, dead every year, from what comes through our southern border. They shouldnt be allowing people to come through their country from Central, from Honduras and Guatemala, El Salvador. Fox News interview Thursday.
THE FACTS: Trump is inflating the death toll from drug overdoses more than 70,200 in 2017 and wrongly blaming all the known deaths on Mexico. Tens of thousands of those deaths have nothing to do with Mexico or Central America. They are from legally made prescription opioids, fentanyl laboratories in China or other sources of international drug smuggling and illicit manufacturing in the U.S. More than 17,000 of the deaths in 2017, for example, were from prescription opioids alone.
Mexico is indeed a significant conduit in the drug trade its a leading source of heroin, for example but it is hardly the only one.
