Former Mexican President Vicente Fox blasted President Trump, Calling him a “fake leader” and a “false prophet” who is running a strong authoritarian government.
Speaking National Press Club Headliners Luncheon last week, Fox opened his speech remarks, taking a shot at Trump’s campaign pledge of building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
“Thank you for the invitation, Marta [his wife] and I are glad to be here, I had to jump a wall to be here with you to defend the First Amendment,” he said.
The world “reached its very best peak of progress” because of globalism in 2013, Fox argued, and then the “disruptor” was elected navigating society towards “a strong authoritarian government.”
“The next date I want to mention is 2016. After this great progress of human kind all around the world, we see something new happening. We see the Brexit. We see Cataluña trying to move out Spain,” he said. “And we see a very special phenomenon here in the United States: the election of Sr. Trump. This is the election of a new alternative world, with a U-turn to comeback to the old times of the nation and state, to the old time of a strong authoritarian government.”
President Trump, Fox argued, is the antithesis of the American dream in his attempt to “to control borders,” to “control citizens” and “control all free thinking into one thinking mind.”
“It’s difficult to understand why should we put a whole nation in the hands of one man and let him do what he pleases. That’s not the American dream – that’s not what Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and all of them thought. They wanted to have independent branches of powers. They wanted to have checks and balances because they knew that sometime and sometimes you get as leaders fake leaders, false prophets. You get as leaders those who don’t have clear the path where they’re going and what for they’re moving there.”
Fox slammed Trump for punishing American companies that move jobs overseas and warned the president’s handling of the economy is steering the U.S. towards a depression.
“We are back to the nation state, we are back to what we saw at the beginning of last century. A president like President Hoover, taking positions to limit, to refrain creativity, innovation, change of the corporations, limiting them to go abroad and produce, forcing them to stay at home, or taxing imports, worst off. And what happened? The big depression,” Fox said. “So we’ve been moving around this global world that we’ve been building together and that we have seen how enriching rewarding and successful it has been. Globalization and technology produced those great progresses of human kind. So this is what we have today.”
Trump, on the campaign trail called North American Free Trade Agreement “the worst trade deal” ever signed by the US. He blames NAFTA for wiping out US manufacturing jobs by allowing companies to move factories to Mexico where labor is cheaper.
In April 2017, US President threatened to pull out of the trade agreement. Canada and Mexico insisted to renegotiate it instead. The Trump administration is negotiating a deal on a revamped NAFTA.
Fox claimed NAFTA gave Mexicans economic incentive to stay in Mexico rather than migrating to the United States, that the trade agreement increased the wages for Mexicans and blasted Trump for interfering with the Mexican economy with his plans to build a wall.
“Some are thinking of building walls – stupid idea. I mean when we have worked together, the three of us, Canada, the United States and Mexico for long, way, way before Trump reached power, and we decided to join and partner twenty-five years ago and we have built the best tool for progress, for competitiveness, for creating jobs, for bringing income to people – that is something you cannot deny 25 years after NAFTA.”
He continued: “NAFTA in one generation, twenty-five years, accomplished 80 percent of the dream. And today Mexicans have full employment in most of its regions and states. Today the migration trend has reversed. Now many more Mexicans are coming back to Mexico. That was the original idea of NAFTA, to create the jobs, to create the opportunities in Mexico so that people would not be willing to migrate and that’s exactly what we should do now with Central America.”
Fox repudiated Trump for referring to MS-13 illegal alien gang members “animals.”
“And here comes this disruptor or destroyer with a fool’s ignorance on how economies work. To say that its not right that Mexico takes away the jobs from United States,” he said. “It is not fair, it offends dignity to call ‘animals’ to those migrants… this disruptor comes in, closing his eyes, thinking that he knows about economy, and comes with the wrong decisions and at the wrong time. Because as I said, NAFTA is working, we just have to be patient with, yes, another generation so that we have a successful Mexico.”
