After restating plans to build a wall along the US border with Mexico, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Thursday that the Trump administration plans to pay for the project by imposing a 20 percent tax on all imports from Mexico.
Spicer did not clarify how the administration would impose the tax, but said it would be part of a broader plan to tax imports from countries, including Mexico, with which the United States has a trade deficit.
“If you tax that $50 billion at 20 percent of imports — which is, by the way, a practice that 160 other countries do — right now our country’s policy is to tax exports and let imports flow freely in, which is ridiculous,” Spicer told reporters. “By doing it that way, we can do $10 billion a year and easily pay for the wall just through that mechanism alone. That’s really going to provide the funding.”
Approximately $1.4 billion worth of goods cross the US-Mexico border daily. Mexico is the world’s second-largest customer for American-made products, and 80 percent of Mexican exports are sold to the United States.