Ex-WTO chief Pascal Lamy calls Donald Trump’s migration deal with Mexico a win for ‘hostage taking’
- Mexico averted US tariff threat by agreeing to expand contentious asylum programme and to work to stem flow of immigrants to US from Central America
- Lamy says US president’s trade decisions are ‘in total violation of WTO rules’
The migration deal imposed on Mexico this week by US President Donald Trump under the threat of punitive tariffs was a victory for “hostage taking” over international rules, a former head of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) said on Saturday.
Late on Friday, the United States and Mexico struck an accord to avert a tariff war when Mexico agreed to expand a contentious asylum programme and deploy security forces to stem the flow of illegal immigration from Central America.
Mexico made the concessions after Trump threatened to slap escalating import tariffs of 5 per cent on all Mexican goods from Monday if the administration of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador did not do more to tighten its borders.
“My reaction is it seems that hostage taking works. That’s my reaction,” Pascal Lamy, a former director general of the WTO, said in a telephone interview, adding that Trump’s actions went against the spirit of international diplomacy.
“If there’s a rule of law, it’s because people believe it’s better than the law of the jungle. And many people don’t like the law of the jungle because some are strong, some are weak, and they don’t want the strong to always step on the weak.”