Trump threatens to close US border

The un­pre­dictable pres­i­dent of the US con­tin­ues to fight his own con­gress about bud­gets, pro­long­ing the par­tial gov­ern­ment shut­down cur­rently un­der­way. On twit­ter, his favourite vent­ing plat­form, he com­plained of not get­ting his way and said “we will be forced to close the South­ern Bor­der en­tirely if the Ob­struc­tion­ist De­moc­rats do not give us the money to fin­ish the Wall & also change the ridicu­lous im­mi­gra­tion laws that our Coun­try is sad­dled with” [sic]. The par­tial shut­down af­fects a quar­ter of gov­ern­ment agen­cies and began with the dis­agree­ment over the fi­nanc­ing of the wall with Mex­ico, one Trump’s elec­tion promises. Ac­cord­ing to the pres­i­dent, clos­ing the bor­der would be a “profit mak­ing op­er­a­tion” and ben­e­fit the US due to losses from the North Amer­i­can Free Trade Agree­ment (NAFTA), in ef­fect since 1994. “We build the wall or we close the south­ern bor­der.”

The shut­down of the US ad­min­is­tra­tion will most likely con­tinue into 2019 due to the dis­tance be­tween the ne­go­ti­at­ing po­si­tions of the White House and the De­moc­rats in op­po­si­tion. Trump wants $5 bil­lion from Con­gress, but so far De­moc­rats have only been will­ing to al­lo­cate $1.3 bil­lion to bor­der se­cu­rity, with re­stric­tions that im­pede the con­struc­tion of a wall. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of fed­eral gov­ern­ment work­ers have ei­ther stopped going to work or con­tinue to do so with­out know­ing when they will be paid. The two Houses of Con­gress - the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate - met last Thurs­day but found no com­mon ground to ad­vance talks, and will meet again on Mon­day. Next week, a new House, dom­i­nated by the De­moc­rats, who won the No­vem­ber midterm elec­tions, will be in­au­gu­rated, whilst Re­pub­li­cans will keep con­trol of the Sen­ate, throw­ing more un­cer­tainty at the issue.