Trump says Mexico halting migrant flow may be a condition for Nafta trade deal

President’s threats to leave Nafta have unnerved US industry and members of his own Republican party

Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico, join their hands during a demonstration against the U.S President Donald Trump's immigration policies, in Hermosillo, Senora state, Mexico April 23, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido
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President Donald Trump said on Monday he may make Mexico halting the flow of undocumented migrants into the United States a condition for a renegotiated trade deal.

“Mexico, whose laws on immigration are very tough, must stop people from going through Mexico and into the US. We may make this a new condition of our new NAFTA Agreement. Our Country cannot accept what is happening! Also, we must get Wall funding fast,” he wrote on Twitter.

The social media announcement came more than a week after the US leader said talks to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada were "coming along great", although he said there was no deadline for a new deal to be completed.

Mr Trump's threats to quit Nafta have unnerved US industry and members of his own Republican party, who say the US has benefited from the pact.

They have also rattled Canada and Mexico.

The latter, which sends about 80 per cent of its exports to the US, lashed out at Mr Trump's tweet.

Mexican foreign minister Luis Videgaray said it was “unacceptable” to link Nafta to migration issues.

“Mexico decides its own migration policy, as a sovereign state,” he wrote on Twitter.

US-Mexican relations have deteriorated again in recent weeks as Mr Trump fired off a series of furious tweets about a group of more than 1,000 Central American migrants travelling toward the US border, calling on the Mexican government to stop them.

But Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto warned Mr Trump that "threatening or disrespectful attitudes" were uncalled for, and ordered his government to carry out a sweeping review of all co-operation with the US.

The group, whose numbers have dwindled to about 600 people, is nearing the US border. The activists leading it said they would help about 200 migrants request asylum in America because they are fleeing violence or repression.

Ties between the US and Mexico have been strained since Mr Trump came to power in 2016 on the back of an election campaign heavy on anti-Mexican rhetoric and promises to build a wall on the two countries' border and make Mexico pay for it.