Ron Paul: Trump’s Mexico wall ‘sounds like theft’

Ron Paul on Wednesday said Donald Trump’s plan for funding a wall along America’s border with Mexico resembles stealing.

“I think it sounds like theft,” he said on Fox Business Network’s “Kennedy.” “And I think it sounds like something illegal. I think it sounds like it’s immoral.”

{mosads}Reports emerged on Tuesday that Trump would coerce Mexico into funding his proposed barrier by threatening to freeze on money transfers from the U.S. to Mexico.

Trump purportedly plans on shrinking the number of such transactions — called remittances — by changing a rule in the USA Patriot Act anti-terrorism law. He would abandon the threatened maneuver for a “one-time payment of $5–10 billion” in payments from Mexico.

Paul on Wednesday criticized the GOP presidential front-runner’s strategy as detrimental to the global economy.

“There are $24 billion  that are transferred to Mexico through these remittances, and he says he’s going to get $5 or $6 billion, whatever is necessary,” he said. “The costs always go up, so maybe he’s going to take it all.”

“It does a great harm to those companies that transfer this money because they’ve been doing this for a long time,” the former Texas House representative added.

“The economics of this is just so bizarre to think that they could do that. A lot of people are going to buy into it and say, ‘Oh yeah, there’s a way to do it, we’re not being taxed.’ Believe me, we’re always being taxed, one way or the other.”

President Obama on Tuesday rejected Trump’s idea, arguing that it is both impractical and offensive to Mexican leadership.

“The notion that we are going to track every Western Union that’s being sent to Mexico — good luck with that,” he said during a White House press conference.