Mexico ready to quit NAFTA if US talks failYahoo News, Jan 24, 2017, Jean Luis Arce
Mexico City (AFP) - Mexico drew red lines on Tuesday ahead of negotiations with US President Donald Trump's administration, warning it could quit the talks and a major trade pact if the discussions hit a wall.
During the US election campaign, Trump vowed to make Mexico pay for a massive border wall and threatened to finance it by tapping into the $25 billion in remittances that Mexican migrants sent back home last year.
"There are very clear red lines that must be drawn from the start," Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told the Televisa network as he prepares to meet with US officials in Washington on Wednesday and Thursday.
Asked whether the Mexican delegation would walk away from the negotiating table if the wall and remittances are an issue, Guajardo said: "Absolutely."
Guajardo and Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray will hold the face-to-face talks with the new US administration ahead of a meeting between Trump and President Enrique Pena Nieto on January 31.
NAFTA threat -
In addition to the wall, Trump wants to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada, warning last week that he would abandon the pact unless the United States gets "a fair deal."
The Mexican government has responded that it is willing to "modernize" the pact, which came into force in 1994 and represents $531 billion in annual bilateral trade between Mexico and the United States.
Some 80 percent of Mexico's exports go to the United States, a clear indicator of the country's dependence on the US market for its economic wellbeing.
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