Mexico’s finance minister stepped down Wednesday amidst criticisms for encouraging the Mexican president to invite Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to the country.
Former Finance Minister Luis Videgaray’s resignation is reported to be the government’s way of indirectly admitting that the meeting between President Enrique Peña Nieto and Trump was a disaster. Peña Nieto’s approval ratings nosedived ahead of the visit to a record low of 23 percent, before the GOP nominee’s visit to his country.
Videgaray, 48, is an economist and former investment banker with a masters from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Ph.D. from Yale University, who has overseen the country’s finances since September 2012. Despite his credentials and many years of being a top adviser to Peña Nieto, the president let him go in the cabinet shakeup.
Peña Nieto was thrashed in Mexican media for reportedly letting Trump walk all over him in their press conference after a closed-door meeting. Many Mexicans were particularly angered their president did not forcefully state the country would never pay for a border wall.
During the joint press conference held by Peña Nieto and Trump, the Republican presidential candidate denied the issue of who would pay for a U.S.-Mexico border wall came up. The Mexican leader tweeted after their press conference that payment for a border wall in fact did come up, and that he said Mexico would not pay for it.
As a result of the conflicting story-lines, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said Trump “choked” in his visit to Mexico.
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