U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a senior adviser, Jared Kushner, is scheduled to visit Mexico on Wednesday where he will be meeting with President Enrique Pena Nieto to discuss the rising trade issues and Trump’s demands that Mexico will pay for the border wall.
Kushner visit comes after President Trump and Pena Nieto late last month postponed plans for the Mexican leader’s first visit to the White House.
In a statement Tuesday night, the Mexican foreign ministry announced Kushner’s visit. Also, a senior U.S. administration official confirmed the visit, adding that the meeting will mainly focus on security, immigration, and trade issues.
Trump since his presidential campaign wants Mexico to pay for the border wall that he wants to build in order to keep out illegal immigrants.
However, Mexico’s leaders immediately rejected the demand, and the planned White House summit was rescheduled after a telephone call between the two leaders turned bad over Trump’s insistence.
According to Reuters, on Monday, as the latest round of the negotiations over a revamped North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were wrapping up, Trump repeated that the trade deal was bad for the United States and that Mexico was not doing enough to stop drugs flowing into the country.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials told Reuters last week that although Kushner is a top foreign policy adviser, he has recently lost access to the most valued U.S. intelligence report.
The Mexico visit is seen as the last chance for Kushner to repair a key U.S. relationship with which he will prove his usefulness to the White House.
“I see it as one of the few things of consequence that he can do that don’t require a security clearance,” said Agustin Barrios Gomez, a former federal congressman and head of the working group on the future of U.S.-Mexico relations at the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations.
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