President Donald Trump said Friday he will not put tariffs on Mexico after all, saying it has agreed to take new measures to stop the illegal flow of migrants into the United States.
"The Tariffs scheduled to be implemented by the U.S. on Monday, against Mexico, are hereby indefinitely suspended," the president tweeted.
He added: "Mexico, in turn, has agreed to take strong measures to stem the tide of Migration through Mexico, and to our Southern Border."
Mexico Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard in a tweet confirmed the agreement. In a separate tweet, he thanked all who supported Mexico through its negotiations with the United States.
Mexican Ambassador Martha Bárcena also wrote in a tweet translated into English: After several days of negotiations and 12 hours today in the State Department, we reached an agreement with the United States to address the humanitarian crisis stemming from the recent migratory flows that have affected our two countries.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a statement said the joint obligations that the U.S. and Mexico negotiated will benefit both countries.
"The United States looks forward to working alongside Mexico to fulfill these commitments so that we can stem the tide of illegal migration across our southern border and to make our border strong and secure," Pompeo said.
But as I said earlier, once you give in to the bully...
Both countries agreed to "take further actions" if the measures adopted do not result in limiting migrants seeking asylum. It is unclear at the moment what the new actions might be. It is also unclear how the U.S. and Mexico will measure results.
Want to know what really happened on Friday to make Trump fold?
Job creation decelerated strongly in May, with nonfarm payrolls up by just 75,000 even as the unemployment rate remained at a 50-year low, the Labor Department reported Friday.
The decline was the second in four months that payrolls increased by less than 100,000 as the labor market continues to show signs of weakening. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a gain of 180,000.
In addition to the weak total for May, the previous two months’ reports saw substantial downward revisions. March’s count fell from 189,000 to 153,000 and the April total was taken down to 224,000 from 263,000, for a total reduction of 75,000 jobs.
Stock futures fell and bond yields dropped in reaction to the report. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures turned negativebefore reversing course and turning positive. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to its lowest level since September 2017.
With the downward revisions,
zero net jobs were created in May.
Zero.
Even Trump can count that high. So he declared victory and ran. Mexican tariffs will cost the US millions of jobs and he knows it. He's used up all his economic cushion losing to China. He doesn't have anything left to hide job losses of a Mexican trade war. The one thing keeping him in office is the economy he inherited, and he's coming close to breaking it now.
He'll try again of course, but it sure took that awful jobs number off the front page, didn't it?