President Donald Trump is not 'ready to close' the border after all.
Trump told reporters Thursday that he'll tariff cars coming over from Mexico first, and look at closing the border in a year.
It was a steep climb down from repeated threats to close it the border as soon as this week. American CEOs warned him in a Wednesday letter that even threatening to do it hurts companies and their workers and he should rethink his decision.
He signaled Thursday that their complaints had an impact.
'The only thing frankly better, but less drastic than closing the border, is to tariff the cars coming in,' he said. 'We're going to give them a one-year warning and if the drugs don't stop or largely stop, we'll put tariffs on Mexico and products, in particular cars.'
President Donald Trump is not 'ready to close' the border after all. He said he's giving Mexico a year stop illegal immigration - or he'll come back to the topic
Earlier this week he was singing a very different tune. 'I'm ready to close it, if I have to close it,' he told reporters on Tuesday in the Oval Office.
CEOs from America's leading companies told the Trump administration Wednesday that a border shutdown 'would severely damage the operations of American businesses and hurt American workers' and the president should not count it as an option.
The heads of GM, JP Morgan Chase, Oracle, Johnson & Johnson, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Cisco, IBM, Marriott, AT&T, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Comcast and dozens of American businesses sent the administration a letter via the Business Roundtable outlining the economic risks of Trump proposed port of entry closure.
'Closing the border would back up thousands of trucks, impact billions of dollars of goods each day, cripple supply chains and stall U.S. manufacturing and business activity,' they said in a letter to the president's economic advisers and members of his Cabinet.
Trump said last week that he could close it all down within days if the illegal immigration does not come to an immediate halt. He claimed Tuesday that he 'ready to close' to do it and will if Congress doesn't change America's laws.
In a Wednesday tweet, he threatened a border closure again, and America's CEOs signaled they'd had enough.
Administration officials were working behind the scenes, in the meantime, to limit disruptions to the economy and local businesses, in case Trump acts on his threat during a Friday visit to Calexico, California, to see newly-constructed areas of his border wall.
Economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Wednesday morning that the administration was looking at keeping freight lanes open if Trump shuts down the rest of the border
Trump warned Congress again on Wednesday that he'll shutdown the border without immediate action
In this photo taken on April 2, 2019 cars line up to cross to San Diego, US from Tijuana, Mexico at San Ysidro crossing port in Baja California state, Mexico
Economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Wednesday morning that the administration was looking at keeping freight lanes open if Trump shuts down the rest of the border. He also stressed that the president hasn't made a decision to shut it down, yet.
'We're very integrated with the Mexican economy,' he acknowledged at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast. 'We certainly looking at it, we're certainly exploring it. We will do the best that we can in the event that that becomes necessary.'
White House Director of Strategic Communication Mercedes Schlapp punted to the president's Council of Economic Advisers as she was cornered by reporters outside the building on Wednesday morning and questioned about a possible border closure's economic impacts.
'They're studying all options,' she said. 'They're looking ways to ensure that we're able to minimize any economic impact.'
She said the Department of Homeland Security is working on alternatives to a closure, but the border crisis is at a 'breaking point' and it's a priority of the president to fix it.
'We're looking at all options. I think what we've already started to see is Secretary Nielsen has ordered the redeployment of resources from the ports of entry to other points along the border where we're seeing the surge of illegal immigrants coming through the border. So that's where we are at this point,' she said.
DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has established an inter-agency task force that's being led by border patrol veteran Manny Padilla. She reportedly said on a call that the administration is treating the border emergency like a Category 5 storm.
'We know that this is a crisis. It's a humanitarian crisis. We want to be able to manage this as we've seen the system is overwhelmed, and it's at a breaking point,' Schlapp on Wednesday said.
A DHS spokesman did not respond to a request from DailyMail.com for comment.
Trump meanwhile claimed, again, that he'd shut it all down if he doesn't see action.
'Congress must get together and immediately eliminate the loopholes at the Border! If no action, Border, or large sections of Border, will close. This is a National Emergency!' he said.
Trump's acting chief of staff warned Sunday that the president isn't bluffing. Mick Mulvaney said it would take 'something dramatic' to change Trump's mind.
Since then, the president altered his border closure threat from a request for new action by Mexico to a demand for a congressional overhaul. Neither seemed particularly likely on Wednesday as warnings that that a border closure would damage national and local economies grew louder.
If the border were to totally shut down it would hamper tourism and trade on both sides of the border. Trucks delivering goods would be temporarily barred from traveling between the United States and Mexico.
'I don't think the car industry would be able to adjust to that very rapidly,' said the American Enterprise Institute's Stan Veuger.
While it is impossible to estimate the total economic cost of a border closure, experts anticipate weekly losses in the billions.
In 2017, the U.S. and Mexico did $615 billion in business with one another, according to the U.S.
