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Originally Posted by DrBooger
We will pay for the wall and the Mexicans will pay us back through tariffs and taxes on their goods and by cutting off money transfers from people working here back to their families in Mexico.
The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!
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Bull$hit.
Trump asking Congress, not Mexico, to pay for border wall - CNNPolitics.com
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Trump himself has estimated his border wall would cost $8 billion, though other analysts have estimated the price would be as much as $10 billion.
And the proposals Trump has outlined to coerce Mexico into paying for the wall involve controversial measures that would still likely fail to cover the wall's full cost.
According to Trump's website, those steps could include: remittance seizure, potential tariffs and foreign aids cuts, increasing fees on temporary visas issued to Mexican CEOs and diplomats, increasing fees on border crossing cards, increasing fees on NAFTA worker visas; and increasing fees at ports of entry to the US from Mexico.
A major challenge for judging Trump's proposal is that most of those steps amount to a drop in the bucket -- less than $1 billion -- compared to the proposed cost of the wall. And the one step that could provide the required amount of money -- remittance seizure -- would face major legal obstacles, in addition to the likelihood of severe domestic and international backlash.
Total US foreign aid to Mexico is less than $200 million a year ($186,000,000 in the 2014 fiscal year), so redirecting all of that money to a border wall would only put a mild dent in the $8 billion bill. And it's difficult to know the amount of revenue generated from a tariff on Mexican exports -- or to account for potential losses from a retaliatory tariff -- without the specifics of the tax.
Moving next to fee increases, Trump says on his website that "even a small increase in visa fees would pay for the wall. This includes fees on border crossing cards, of which more than 1 million are issued a year." But the fees for visas and border crossing cards range from around $150 to $200 each, according to State Department data. Accounting for all the fees on over a million border crossing cards and visas in a year year -- and even accounting for a twofold increase in those fees -- that would still only generate about half a billion dollars, well short of an $8 billion price tag.
The biggest potential source of money for the wall would come from remittance seizure: remittance payments are money that immigrants, legal and illegal, earn in their country of residence and send back to their families in their native country.
According to the bank of Mexico, Mexico received $24.8 billion in remittance payments in 2015. A Fox News Latino report calculated that 97% of remittance payments received by Mexico in the first three months of 2015 came from the US, and the Pew Research Center similarly reported that "nearly all" of Mexico's remittance payment revenue comes from the U.S." Seizing all of that money would probably be more than enough to pay for the border wall.
Trump says on his website that he would use the Patriot Act to require legal identification for money transfer transactions, according to his website. But CNN legal analyst Paul Callan says Trump's plan would likely face multiple legal battles.
"The Mexican immigrants Trump seeks to target are clearly not the 'Radical Islamic Terrorists' that the Patriot Act was designed to fight," says Callan. "The courts are likely to view Mr. Trump's use of the always controversial Patriot Act as an improper and illegal use. The proposal may also fail to place pressure on the Mexican government as money can be smuggled back to Mexico in many other creative ways if wire transfers are cut."
The size of Mexico's remittance revenue far surpasses any other revenue-raising proposal from Trump, and would probably be the most effective way to pay for the border wall. But looking at the obstacles that such an action would face, it's difficult to envision a path to impounding those payments to pay for the wall.
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The bottom line is that Trump made a promise that he knew he couldn't keep and that there were actually millions of people...who believed him.
It doesn't really matter though...as his cultists will still support him.
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Originally Posted by DrBooger
Honestly, I think that people only listen to one point of view. Some only listen to half a story.
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Well, you got one thing correct.
Pretty sure you didn't mean to talk about yourself that way...but that's what you ended up doing.
