There's no way Mexico will shell out a "single cent" for the "stupid wall" Donald Trump vows to build across the nation's southern border, a former president of Mexico declares.
In an interview with
CNBC, former President Felipe Calderon slams the GOP front-runner's oft-stated wall-building promise as "completely crazy."
"The first loser of such a policy would be the United States," Calderon said. "If this guy pretends that closing the borders to anywhere either for trade [or] for people is going to provide prosperity to the United States, he is completely crazy."
"Mexican people, we are not going to pay any single cent for such a stupid wall," he declared in the Saturday interview, the outlet reports. "And it's going to be completely useless."
Trump created a firestorm last summer by declaring "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. ...They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
Calderon said he found it "incredible that a quite admirable society like the American society could produce such kind of candidates."
"No offense to America," he said. "So Donald Trump … is ambitious but not exactly a very well-informed man, I don't want to say ignorant, but he is not very well informed."
The former president noted migration of the Mexican labor force to the United States has been
steadily declining, and that young people in Mexico have more job opportunities there.
"They don't want to go, they can work for a motor company [that's] not in Detroit, I am sorry to say," he said. "They are working for a motor company in Hermosillo and Toluca, so Mazda is coming to Mexico, Honda is coming to Mexico. Those kids have jobs in that industry in Mexico."
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