U.S. provides aid worth $320 million a year to Mexico; experts say yanking it could hurt

Donovan Slack | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Mexico's president says Mexico will not pay for Trump's wall Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto is again saying his country will not pay for a wall after President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to build the wall along the U.S. Mexico border. Josh King has the story (@abridgetoland).

WASHINGTON — The United States directs an average of $320 million worth of aid a year to Mexico for various programs, all of which appear to be targets for President Trump as he looks for ways to pay for the proposed border wall with our southern neighbor.

But specialists say the aid won’t make for much of a bargaining chip as he tries to goad Mexico into footing the bill for the wall, and in fact, yanking the aid could backfire entirely.

Trump directed the government Wednesday to total the amount of "direct and indirect Federal aid or assistance to the Government of Mexico on an annual basis" in an executive order. That preceded a series of back-and-forth moves Thursday in which Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said his country would not pay for the wall and canceled a planned meeting with Trump next week. Then the Trump administration said it would hit Mexican imports with a 20% border tax, and then reversed field to say the planned tax was just an option.

Trump's plans for the wall could start in months President Trump promised to build a wall that runs along the entire U.S.-Mexico border. Now's he's taking the first steps to make it a reality.

The largest chunk of U.S. aid goes toward law enforcement — including helping Mexican authorities capture drug lords — supporting improvements to the Mexican judicial system and security, including along Mexico’s southern border, helping stem the flow of immigrants from Central and South America.

“If we cut off aid to Mexico, we strengthen the drug cartels, we make our border region a lot more lawless place, and we make it easier for undocumented immigrants from Central America to reach the U.S.-Mexico border,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University who specializes in Latin America.

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Trump's executive order doesn’t specify what the aid information will be used for, but its inclusion in the order suggests Trump could try to use it as leverage in negotiations over paying for the wall. White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said Thursday there were "a buffet of options" to pay for the wall.

According to the U. S. Agency for International Development, roughly a dozen agencies directed roughly $1.6 billion overall in aid to Mexico from 2011 to 2015, the most recent year for which complete data is available.

The State Department, Defense Department and USAID provided the largest amounts, accounting for 95% of the $338 million in aid in 2015. The remainder included much smaller slivers from the departments of Energy, Labor, Interior, and Health and Human Services, and the Peace Corps, among others.

Law enforcement and counter-narcotics initiatives accounted for $260 million, while support for justice and legal reforms added up to roughly $10 million, and military aid accounting for another $10 million. The other aid initiatives in 2015 include:

• $5.7 million for a program to improve the competitiveness of Mexican businesses and to improve “environmental policy management to mitigate climate change and preserve Mexican biodiversity.”

• $4.4 million to help with implementation of programs to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

• $ 4 million to support Mexican-led efforts to develop and implement a low-emissions development strategy.

• $4 million for crime and violence prevention.

The Bernstein Research group estimated the cost for building the southern border wall could range from $15 billion to $25 billion. If the United States redirected all of its foreign aid, at the current annual average, it would take nearly 50 years to reach the low end of that range.

Emboldened drug cartels

Nonpartisan specialists and human rights advocates both say that cutting off aid in the first place will embolden the cartels whose drugs already flow into the United States.

“Those cartels are going to operate with a lot more freedom, and the products that they produce — heroin, meth amphetamine, cocaine — are small in volume and don’t need to be taken into areas where walls are built, they’ll be taken through ports of entry and flood the US market,” said Adam Isacson, a regional and military security specialist at Washington Office on Latin America, a research and advocacy group.

Jones of Rice University said the Mexican government believes the drug problem is one of U.S. consumption rather than the cartels themselves, so if the United States cuts aid and our relations turn more hostile, “they’re going to be more likely to turn a blind eye to cartel activity as long as it focuses on exporting to the United States.”

Matthew Taylor, senior fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the wall construction order and the attempted negotiation itself has made for “one of the more disastrous weeks in U.S.-Latin American relations.”

“The more uncertainty we generate though this attempt at negotiation, the more likely the president’s objectives will be, will not be met -- his objectives on security, his objectives on migration and ultimately his objectives in terms of economic growth,” Taylor said. “It’s a very uncertain game, except for the personal electoral objectives of the president. It seems like it’s a very misguided strategic decision.”