Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s plan to “compel” Mexico to pay for a border wall is missing one glaring, important offshoot: a contingency strategy for ladders — thorns in the backs of walls everywhere.
Aside from that, it also sounds a lot like extortion.
In a memo to journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Trump lays out a three-day strategy to force Mexico to pay for his proposed wall. On day 1, propose a rule to classify money-transferring businesses like Western Union as financial institutions, thereby requiring that the organizations force customers to provide identity documents before they can open an account.
However, as Trump explains, you also have to redefine account to include wire transfers, according to the memo posted online by The Washington Post.
For this to work, Trump muses, the proposed rule change would require a line that says people who are not citizens of the United States may not transfer money without proving legal status.
He goes on to suggest that doing this would threaten $24 billion in cash flow sent to Mexico by workers in the United States. Then, Trump says, tell Mexico to pay X amount of billions of dollars — an amount less than the $24 billion — and then the U.S. won’t implement the previously mentioned proposed rule.
All this in three days.
So, basically, an extortion attempt: hold hard-earned money hostage in exchange for payment to build a wall.
This article appears in Mar 30 – Apr 5, 2016.
