Mexico will walk away from talks on revamping the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) if US President Donald Trump slaps tariffs on Mexican-made goods, the economy minister says.
“The moment that they say, ‘We are going to put a 20 percent tariff on cars,’ I get up from the table,” said Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo.
“Bye-bye,” he added in an interview with Bloomberg News published Monday.
The comments ratchet up Mexico’s threats to boycott a renegotiation of its 1994 trade deal with the US and Canada if Trump insists on hard-line changes.
Trump has repeatedly trashed NAFTA as part of a tough stance on trade that has included threats to slap tariffs on imports from Mexico.
He has also floated tariffs as a way to pay for his plan to build a wall on the Mexican border, which he argues is needed to stop undocumented immigrants and drug trafficking.
Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said Friday that Mexico would retaliate in kind if Trump slapped tariffs on goods made south of the border.
Bilateral trade between Mexico and the US amounts to $500 billion a year, and some 80 percent of Mexican exports go to the US.
But Trump has said America’s $60 billion trade deficit with Mexico proves NAFTA was a bad deal.

Source: Arab News