Mexico formulates plan to deal with success of Trump presidential campaign

PASADENA, CA - OCTOBER 10: Flags of the United States and Mexico wave before the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup Qualifier at Rose Bowl on October 10, 2015 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Jonathan Moore/Getty Images) (2015 Getty Images)

MEXICO CITY – Donald Trump's strong showing in the Super Tuesday contests appears to open a clear path for the real estate tycoon to the Republican presidential nomination.

Which puts the government of Mexico in a quandary.

With $500 billion in annual trade, the United States is the country’s largest trade partner and the two nations share much in the way of joint history and culture — but there is the small matter of what former President Vicente Fox recently called “that f---ing wall” that Trump promised to build along the 1,954-mile border.

On Tuesday, the Mexican government outlined a plan to address its unexpected central role in the U.S. presidential campaign – and it doesn't include getting into verbal duels with any of the candidates.

"We could win the front page of all the newspapers here or in other places with a swear word and the next day that would not be good for anyone," said Francisco Guzmán, a spokesperson for President Enrique Peña Nieto's office.

Guzman said the government will approach the campaigns of the Republican and Democratic nominees once they are chosen, and only then share information about how the U.S. relationship with Mexico is an opportunity and not a threat.

While that may be the official strategy, it isn’t the script that many current or former officials have stuck to recently.

Arturo Sarukhan, who served as Mexico's Ambassador to the United States from 2007 to 2013, told Fox News Latino, "Trump is a walking fact-free zone, Teflon-coated to hard data and with lips as loose as his facts."

Sarukhan added, "Trump doesn't get that trade and diplomacy are a two-way street. You slap tariffs on, and nations retaliate. He wants to jeopardize 8 million U.S. jobs that directly depend on exports to Mexico and that 26 states in America have Mexico as their No. 1 or number export destination? He can be my guest."

Mexico's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Claudia Ruiz Massieu, earlier this week took on a similarly pugnacious tone, describing Trump as "racist and ignorant," while former President Fox last week refused on U.S. television not once, but twice, to "pay for that f---ing wall."

The first time he said it, in an interview with Univision’s Jorge Ramos last Thursday, it almost sounded like "fricking." Later that night, while speaking on Fox Business Network, he removed all doubt, taking a short pause before dropping a well-enunciated F-bomb.

In the interviews, the former president went on to compare the likely Republican nominee to Hitler, and slammed the wall's possible impact on trade.

"The two largest trading partners of the United States are China and Mexico," he said. "We're not talking about peanuts here."

Fox was echoing another former Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, who described Trump's wall as “stupid” in rejecting it, and saying the reality TV’s rhetoric "exploit[s] feelings like Hitler did in his time."

Trump's wall would amount to shutting the world's busiest border. Almost half a billion crossings take place annually, at the border's 330 ports of entry. For many Mexicans living on the border, a daily commute into the U.S. is part of their working lives.

For all of Trump's rhetoric, the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimates that approximately 85,000 of the people crossing the border illegally per year will go on to live undocumented in the United States.

As it stands, the U.S. and Mexico are already partially separated by a 670-mile border wall, which cost $2.4 billion under the 2006 Secure Fence Act. Walling off the remaining 1,200 miles could cost up to $16 million per mile, with construction snaking across two major deserts.

Currently, almost 21,000 armed border agents patrol the U.S.-Mexico border, supplemented by nine drones that cost $21,000 per hour to run.

That cost, too, would rise.

Which is exactly the point Guzmán said the Mexican government hopes to press.

Outlining the plan to journalists, he said Mexican consulates in the U.S. have been instructed to start meeting with organizations and public opinion leaders to discuss the contributions Mexicans make to the United States.

"What the government will do is deploy a greater effort to counteract the misinformation about the bilateral relationship, about the contributions of Mexican immigrants to the United States, but in a very neutral way," Guzman added. "It is not to go against one candidate."

Just last week, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden called some of the campaign rhetoric "damaging" during a visit to Mexico City and assured his hosts it did not represent the attitudes of the majority of Americans.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.