After the US and Mexico reached an agreement late on Friday to stave off tariffs on Mexican goods in return for concessions on immigration, Donald Trump heralded the deal but complained about its coverage by US media.
His treasury secretary said the president retained the authority to impose tariffs if Mexico did not live up to the deal, The Guardian reported.
Trump had threatened to impose 5% tariffs on all Mexican goods, rising to 25%, if the country did not agree new measures to stem migration from Central America. The tariffs were set to go in effect today (10 June) but the president tweeted late on Friday that a deal had been reached and the tariffs were "indefinitely suspended".
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In a joint declaration, both countries said Mexico agreed to immediately expand along the entire border a programme that sends migrants seeking asylum in the US back to Mexico while they await adjudication.
The country also agreed to increase enforcement to contain the flow of migrants headed to the US, including by deploying national guard troops to its southern border and cracking down on human smuggling, the declaration said.
On Saturday, Trump thanked Mexico's president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, his foreign minister and "all of the many representatives of both the United States and Mexico, for working so long and hard to get our agreement on immigration completed!"
Meanwhile, at a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Fukuoka, Japan, treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said he had spoken to Trump before the deal was announced and added: "We now have an agreement that we believe is going to fix the immigration issue.
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By GlobalData"And that was extremely important to the president.
"Our expectation is that Mexico will do what they've committed to do and our expectation is that we won't need to put tariffs in place, but obviously if that's not the case, the president retains that authority."
The Guardian noted Mexico and US officials negotiated for three days in Washington. Americans bought IS$378bn of Mexican imports last year, led by cars and auto parts. Companies were racing to ship as many goods as possible out of Mexico, including cars, construction materials and appliances. On Friday, hundreds of semi-trailers idled at a truck crossing in Tijuana.
The two countries will continue talks, to be completed in 90 days, on further steps, the paper added.
