Later O’Rourke will tell us backstage with his shirt sweaty and exhausted from his campaigning speech that he is as worried about Trump’s Wall as about the trade war with China, Trump’s confrontation with European partners and his quarrels with neighbors Canada and Mexico , El Paso, located in the southwest of Texas and right on the border with Mexico.
For many years, there is a rusty border fence here to protect against smugglers and drug traffickers. Trump’s plans to build a veritable wall here meet with little favor. Be it with Democrats or Republicans – with politicians or in the business community. There is Steffen Poessiger, head of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The father fled across the wall from the GDR. The son says: Even Trump’s wall makes no sense. The border can be well monitored with sophisticated technology. The wall was bad for business.
Wall construction damages investments in the region
There’s Tom Fullerton, an economist at the University of Texas in El Paso. The entire debate over the wall has hurt the cross-border economy as much as the discussion about the fate of Nafta, the free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, he says. Investments did not materialize and growth was left in the air.
The receipt will come
Although the US economy is buzzing under Trump. Growth is just under four percent and unemployment is at its lowest level in decades. But these numbers are built on sand, states Texas in the border with Mexico. The receipt for the prestige loss by the wall construction and the consequences of the trade war will inevitably come, says Miguel Fernandez, entrepreneur from El Paso. He has built a cross-border Internet company and is now one of the largest providers in the western United States. The Wall is a waste of time, he says, pure sensationalism of Donald Trump.
Instead, Trump should pursue an innovative immigration policy that takes into account the fact that the US labor market desperately needs immigrants.
