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It began perhaps as no more than an impulse, part of his newly acquired role as the agent provocateur of American politics. It caused a sensation, as it was intended to do, and many political professionals thought it would fall away in the breezes of an autumn presidential drive, one more leaf signifying a titillating but ultimately meaningless campaign promise. But there was something to the idea of building a wall across the Mexican border, and making Mexico pay for it, that appealed to Donald Trump and, what is more, that appealed to Mr. Trump's growing group of followers.

Now, not a week into Mr. Trump's presidency, he is pouring concrete into his proposal, not only to build that wall – actually parts of a wall across the border already exist – but also to make Mexico pay for it. But that payment will not be in the form of a cheque, nor will it be at the discretion of Mexico itself, though it could be at the discretion of another formidable political obstacle, the United States Congress.

Mr. Trump's proposal, presented in the barest outline by the White House Thursday and in a form that could simply be a trial balloon, would be to impose a 20-per-cent tax on imports from Mexico, the third largest trading partner of the United States. That proposal likely will be part of White House plans for a comprehensive overhaul of the nation's tax system, the first such undertaking in nearly a third of a century. The last time a president engaged in such a project, in 1985, the effort took two years and required dozens of hearings, scores of backroom deals, massive presidential lobbying and prime-time nationwide television appeals.

As tensions flare with Mexico, White House floats idea of wall tax

The notion the White House floated would draw strong opposition from several sectors. These include business interests, which profit from the nearly $600-billion (U.S.) in bilateral trade with Mexico; auto executives who worry that a 20-per-cent tax on a $20,000 car would effectively destroy the industry; allies of Mexican-American political groups in the United States; consumer groups that will argue the measure would increase prices for American shoppers; and some economists who inevitably will argue that trade barriers, though popular on the campaign stump, are deleterious to the economy, which benefits from unfettered trade.

"This irony," said a former high-level U.S. diplomat involved in Latin American affairs, "is that the effort to promote jobs in the United States will make buying goods in this country much more expensive for those very people this is intended to help." Moreover, some Americans, both on the left and right, will consider the wall a perplexing if not offensive symbol for a nation that has opened its doors to immigrants and profited from their economic contributions and the cultural richness provided by a constant infusion of newcomers with their customs, perspectives – and limitless ambition and ingenuity.

Mr. Trump, however, has argued that the U.S. has been the victim of the North American free-trade agreement, which also involves Canada, and that goods prepared by low-salaried workers in Mexico undercut wages north of the border and drain jobs to Mexico, leaving vast areas of the U.S. industrial heartland denuded of economic opportunity and growth. This theme re-emerged in Mr. Trump's inaugural address earlier this month, when he said that "For many decades, we've enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry," adding, "We've made other countries rich, while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has dissipated over the horizon."

The Trump tax notion emerged only hours after President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico, who has repeatedly said his country would not pay for the wall, cancelled his trip to visit with Mr. Trump next week. What the Mexican President did not anticipate was a rapid-fire White House response – one that moved the debate from what payments the Mexican government might make to the United States to what levies the United States might extract from Mexico, which sent $316.4-billion in goods and services northward in 2015. The American trade deficit with Mexico reached nearly $50-billion that year.

Mr. Trump may have little experience with the innards of American politics, but his top trade official, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, was chief of staff of the Senate finance committee, which oversees trade on Capitol Hill, and was at the centre of the negotiations for the last massive overhaul of the tax code. That was an episode so complicated and colourful that the book that emerged from it was titled Showdown at Gucci Gulch, a reference to the Gucci-clad lobbyists who huddled in the halls outside the Senate finance committee and who, committee chairman Senator Bob Dole of Kansas said, would be "barefoot in the morning."

But those negotiations took place in a far different atmosphere from today, for Ronald Reagan's Republicans were in control of the Senate, though not of the House of Representatives, where, under the Constitution, all revenue bills must originate. The GOP now controls both houses, but there is no assurance that the Republicans on the tax-writing committees, many of whom have their own comprehensive tax proposals in their suit-coat pockets, will accede to the President's demands.

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