The President will head to Calexico, California, Friday afternoon to tour replacement border fencing and participate in a border security roundtable. According to the Arizona Republic, the two-mile stretch replacement barrier he'll see was authorized prior to when he came into office, but a plaque on the bollards calls it "the first section of President Trump's border wall."
The visit follows a series of threats Trump made calling for Mexico and Congress to shape up or face the closure of the southern border.
The initial threat Trump issued last week was that he'd close down the southern border within a week if Mexico didn't increase migrant apprehensions on its southern border, where Central American migrants seeking to move northward may eventually try to illegally enter the US.
But by Thursday, Trump's demand morphed into a tariff threat. He said he'd give Mexico a one-year warning and potentially implement a 25% auto tariff if the country didn't stop the flow of illicit drugs being smuggled into the US.
The tariffs, he suggested, would make a border closure unnecessary.
"I don't think we'll ever have to close the border because the penalty of tariffs on cars coming into the United States from Mexico, at 25%, will be massive."
Despite the clear pivot, Trump said Friday ahead of his California departure that he "never changed his mind" about his threat to close the southern border.
"I never changed my mind at all. I may shut it down at some point, but I'd rather do tariffs," Trump told reporters.
"The tariffs will work just like they've worked with steel," he said. The auto tariff, he added, "supersedes" the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade.
The President also said he's "looking at an economic penalty on all the drugs that are coming in through the southern border and killing our people."
However, further details on the potential economic penalties or the auto tariffs have yet to be announced by the Trump administration.
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