The Mexican telecom magnate Carlos Slim has criticized Donald Trump’s plans for a border wall, saying that frontier security would be better achieved through investment and job creation in Mexico.
“The best wall is investment, development and employment opportunities,” said Slim, speaking to reporters at a rare press conference. “People leave Mexico in search of opportunities, not because they’re tourists.”
Slim repeatedly lauded Trump on Friday as “a great negotiator” while quoting liberally from his book Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America.
Speaking at the end of a week in which relations between the two countries have slumped to a new low, Slim downplayed the potential threat that the Trump administration represents for Mexico.
“Trump is not the Terminator. He’s Negotiator,” Slim said. “I don’t see risks. I see opportunity.”
But he offered a subtle critique of the US president’s professed plan to “make America great again”, saying “returning to a glorious past of American industry that made them the world leader in the 20th century will not work”.
He added: “Mexico is the best partner the US has and also the most complementary” and said Mexican workers were excellent and earned “less” than their counterparts in China.
Slim’s companies in telecommunications, retailing and constructions pervade everyday life in Mexico and he exerts an outsized influence in the country.
Observers said his press performance Friday – in which he was jovial and often light in his answers – suggested that Slim was positioning himself as a potential interlocutor with the Trump administration.
Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has seemed indecisive in the face of Trump’s aggressive border policy and his provocative tweets, but Slim – whose net worth is estimated by Forbes magazine at $49.3b – appears less intimidated by Trump.
The two men dined together at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on 21 December – an experience which the then president-elect described as “a lovely dinner with a wonderful man”.
Slim’s press conference came as Peña Nieto and Trump agreed to stop speaking publicly about the border wall – and who will pay for it.
The two presidents spoke for an hour Friday morning, according to statement from Peña Nieto’s office, which said in a statement that both men “recognized clear differences” on the border wall and would not opine publicly on the topic.
At a joint press conference with the British prime minister, Theresa May, Trump described the conversation as “very, very friendly”, but repeated his plan to renegotiate trade deals, claiming that Mexico had “beat us to a pulp”.
“It was a very, very friendly call,” Trump said. “But the United States cannot continue to lose vast amounts of business, vast amounts of companies and millions and millions of people losing their jobs.”
Trump’s threats have already caused chaos in the Mexican economy, while his executive order to start building a border wall has provoked outrage among ordinary Mexicans – to the extent that many have started rallying around their deeply unpopular president.
“For the first time, I see business leaders, intellectuals, politicians and the media worried with what’s happening,” said Guadalupe Loaeza, an author and columnist.
“We’re finally hearing the alarm bells sounding and we’re asking ourselves, ‘What can we do? How do we unite?’” she added. “There hasn’t been this spirit and desire to do something for the country in years.”
