Category Archives: Mexico

Trump warns ‘foolish’ Republican senators in rare clash over Mexico tariffs

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Lawmakers in president’s own party voice firm opposition to threat over Mexico

In a rare confrontation, Republican senators declared deep opposition Tuesday to Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs on all goods coming into the US from Mexico. But it’s unclear they have the votes to stop him, and Trump said they’d be “foolish” to try.

All sides, including officials from Mexico meeting Trump negotiators in Washington this week, remain hopeful that high-level talks will ease the president away from his threat. But with the tariffs set to start next Monday, and Trump declaring them “more likely” than not to take effect, fellow Republicans in Congress warned the White House they were ready to stand up to the president.

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Trump’s trade wars sent global investment tumbling – World Bank

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Brexit and trade disputes push bank’s policy uncertainty index to record high, says report

Donald Trump’s trade wars with China, Mexico and Europe have sent global investment tumbling, according to a World Bank report that forecasts worldwide growth this year will slip back to levels not seen since 2016.

The Washington-based lender to developing world countries said in its half-yearly global health check that spiralling political uncertainty was to blame for a slowdown in trade and a collapse in investment spending that will push down GDP growth to 2.6% this year “before inching up to 2.7% in 2020”.

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Donald Trump is lashing out at Mexico but his real fight is at home | Phillip Inman

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Democrats are turning a president enraged at the blocking of his border wall into an unhinged beast

Donald Trump’s threats of higher import tariffs against Mexican goods can be better understood not as an escalation of his trade war with the rest of the world, but as the act of a desperate man, prepared to upset most US business leaders to achieve his aim of building a border wall with the country’s southern neighbour.

His anger, which he will bring with him on a state visit to London on Monday, is not so much with Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration in Mexico City as with Congress, which has blocked the border wall, or at least restricted funding to such an extent that its completion is unlikely before the next presidential race gets under way.

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Mexico could tighten migration controls to defuse Trump tariffs threat

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  • Andrés Manuel López Obrador hints at concession to US
  • Talks over US president threat in Washington next week

Mexico’s president hinted on Saturday that his country could tighten migration controls in order to defuse Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Mexican goods. Andrés Manuel López Obrador also said he expected “good results” from talks in Washington next week.

Related: 'No idea too lunatic': how Trump's shock troops attack US democracy

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Donald Trump defends tariffs on Mexico as stock markets reel

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After 5% tariff announced, president tweets ‘Mexico has taken advantage of the US for decades’

Donald Trump has defended his decision to impose new tariffs on Mexico as stock markets worldwide were rattled by fears of an escalation in trade tensions.

“Mexico has taken advantage of the United States for decades,” Trump tweeted. “Because of the Dems, our Immigration Laws are BAD. Mexico makes a FORTUNE from the U.S., have for decades, they can easily fix this problem. Time for them to finally do what must be done!”

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Trump announces tariffs on Mexican goods until ‘migration crisis alleviated’

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US will place a 5% tariff on all goods from Mexico to pressure the country to stop the flow of Central American migrants, Trump says

In a surprise announcement that could compromise a major trade deal, Donald Trump announced Thursday that he is slapping a 5% tariff on all Mexican imports to pressure the country to do more to crack down on the surge of Central American migrants trying to cross the border.

He said the percentage would gradually increase “until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied”.

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‘The people applaud him’: Amlo receives in-flight serenade from passenger

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Mexican president was thanked with an ode while aboard a low-cost flight to Tepic

When Andrés Manuel López Obrador put his presidential Boeing up for sale last year and pledged to travel economy class around Mexico, it was part of a budget-slashing populist push to get closer to the people.

Related: Mexican minister resigns after causing 38-minute flight delay

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A sweet tale: the son who reinvented sugar to help diabetic dad

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The natural substitute helps diabetics, combats obesity and tackles climate change

Javier Larragoiti was 18 when his father was diagnosed with diabetes. The teenager had just started a degree in chemical engineering in Mexico City. So he dedicated his studies to a side project: creating an acceptable alternative to help his father and millions of Mexicans like him avoid sugar.

“It’s only when you know someone with this sickness that you realise how common it is and how sugar intake plays a huge role,” he says. “My dad tried to use stevia and sucralose, just hated the taste, and kept cheating on his diet.”

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Man dies on Aeromexico flight after swallowing 246 packets of cocaine

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Japanese national flying from Bogota to Tokyo is declared dead from an overdose

A Japanese man with 246 packets of cocaine in his stomach and intestines died mid-flight on his way from Bogota to Tokyo, authorities have said in northern Mexico where the plane made an emergency landing.

The 42-year-old man, identified only as Udo N, began having a seizure after the commercial flight from the Colombian capital made a stopover in Mexico City, the prosecutor’s office for the state of Sonora said. “Flight attendants noticed a person suffering convulsions and requested permission to make an emergency landing in Hermosillo, Sonora,” it said.

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Mexico sells off cars from corrupt rich to give to the poor

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Funds from auction of 82 cars worth total of £1m will go to deprived communities

Dozens of luxury cars seized from sticky-fingered politicians and mobsters will go under the hammer this weekend as part of a populist anti-corruption crusade being waged by Mexico’s leftist president.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador has vowed that proceeds from Sunday’s auction will be channelled into social programmes and deprived communities.

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Trump cools trade war by lifting North American metal tariffs

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  • Steel and aluminium imports from Mexico and Canada affected
  • Trump pauses implementation of auto tariffs on EU and Japan

The Trump administration moved to cool the simmering trade war with its major trading partners on Friday, ending tariffs on metal imports from Canada and Mexico and announcing a pause on planned tariffs on cars and car parts.

“I’m pleased to announce we’ve just reached agreement with Canada and Mexico,” Donald Trump said. “We’ll be selling our product into those countries without the imposition of tariffs.”

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Easy prey to the middleman: the immigrants toiling in US fields

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For Mexican farmworkers, seasonal employment in the US is an opportunity to earn more – but those who make the journey can be easily exploited by recruiters

The sun is rising and a line of workers dressed in jeans and hoodies is already snaking its way around the block. A few of them started gathering outside the US consulate building as early as 4am.

Monterrey, the third largest city in Mexico, is a little over 100 miles from the US border, and a hub for farmworkers applying for temporary work visas.

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Mexico: President Amlo’s criticism of national newspaper sparks death threats

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Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised to protect the press, but his barbs have resulted in journalists being harassed

Andrés Manuel López Obrador swept the Mexican left into power with promises of respecting the press and ending the killing of journalists.

Related: 'They went to execute him': fourth Mexican journalist killed so far in 2018

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Mercedes production delays push Daimler’s quarterly profits down by 16%

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Sales of Mercedes-Benz cars fell 7%, partly because of manufacturing bottlenecks

Daimler’s quarterly operating profit has fallen by 16% as a €718m (£620m) one-off gain failed to offset the impact of falling sales in China and production delays at three Mercedes-Benz factories.

Sales of Mercedes-Benz cars fell 7% in the first quarter 0f 2019, partly because of manufacturing bottlenecks for the A-Class compact car in Aguascalientes, Mexico, the Mercedes-Benz van in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Mercedes-Benz GLE SUV in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

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‘Don’t mess with our beers’: outrage in Mexico over motion to ban sale of cold beer

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A lawmaker in Mexico City proposed outlawing the sale of the cold drink in a bid to reduce public and underage drinking

Mexico City residents may have to slake their thirsts with warm beer after a local lawmaker introduced a motion on Wednesday to ban the sale of the cold beverage in convenience stores.

The motion – met with incredulity on social media – would modify Mexico City’s commerce laws to ban selling beer or beverages of 7% or less alcohol content, which are “refrigerated or in different conditions than the ambient temperature.”

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His wife died in combat. His daughter is American. And yet Ice targeted him

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Gonzalez Carranza was once permitted to live and work in the US but his future is uncertain as Trump pushes to deport non-criminal immigrants like him

On a warm April morning in the Arizona desert, Jose Gonzalez Carranza, a thickset man with a slight lisp, a crooked smile and an intricate tattoo of a hundred-dollar bill creeping across his left hand, sits at his kitchen table trying to unpack what’s happened to him.

Gonzalez Carranza, 30, the Gold Star immigrant dad who made national news when he was briefly and mistakenly deported to Mexico in early April, has seen his life spiral out of control.

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Member of armed militia who detained migrants faced similar charges in 2006

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  • Larry Mitchell Hopkins held on Saturday in Texas
  • Earlier arrest involved impersonating a police officer

A member of an armed civilian group that has detained migrants near the US-Mexico border who was arrested on Saturday reportedly faced similar charges in Oregon 13 years ago.

Related: Videos appear to show armed militia detaining migrants at US-Mexico border

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Mexico battles over legacy of revolutionary Emilano Zapata

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As country marks centennial of Zapata’s death, government’s agenda makes ‘mockery’ of insurgent’s ideals, grandson says

Sitting back in the shade of a sapodilla tree, Jorge Zapata González takes a slow drag on his cigarette and tells a cautionary tale of revolution and betrayal.

His grandfather, the Mexican insurgent Emiliano Zapata, rallied poor campesinos under the battle cry “land and liberty” a century ago – only to be double-crossed by a former ally and murdered.

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Trump plans to cut Central America aid, blaming countries for migrant caravans

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The US president accused Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador of ‘arranging’ exodus of migrants

The US has confirmed its intention to cut more than $450 million in aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, as Donald Trump accused the three Central American countries of “arranging” migrant caravans to the US.

Trump relented on his earlier vow to close the entire southern border with Mexico, claiming that the security forces there had begun arresting “a lot of people” in response to his closure threat. But he warned that if the Mexican authorities did not “keep it up” he would seal the frontier, no matter what the economic cost to the US.

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Latin Americans fear precedent set by legal justification for Syria intervention

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Countries fear that legal standard of states being ‘unwilling or unable’ to deal with terrorism could be used in Latin America

Latin American states are mounting a challenge to the acceptance of a legal standard promoted by the US, UK and their allies to justify military operations in the Middle East, fearing the same standard could eventually be used to justify intervention in their own hemisphere.

The Mexican government is spearheading an effort at the UN to bring greater transparency to the formal legal justifications presented by western powers for military operations in Syria and elsewhere.

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