(AFP) – Mexico began Tuesday the 10,000-strong border troop deployment it had promised US President Donald Trump in exchange for delaying a 25-percent tariff on exported goods, President Claudia Sheinbaum said. “The deployment has already started,” she told reporters a day after announcing a last-minute deal with Trump to tighten measures against illegal migration and cross-border smuggling of the drug fentanyl.
Trump on Saturday announced sweeping measures against the United States’s three biggest trading partners: Canada, China, and Mexico. Its immediate neighbors were to pay an export tariff of 25 percent, the president announced, and China an additional 10 percent on top of existing duties. Canada and Mexico announced reciprocal levies before both countries’ presidents managed to strike a deal with Trump Monday that saw him delay the tariffs by a month.
Markets had slumped Monday after the weekend threats sparked fears of a global trade war. Sheinbaum said Tuesday troops had been taken from parts of the country that “do not have as much of a security problem.” More than 450,000 people have been murdered countrywide since Mexico launched a major offensive against drug cartels in 2006.
The US border deployment “does not leave the rest of the country without security,” the president insisted.
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