Trump Crosses the Border

President Peña Nieto sent invitations both to GOP nominee and to Hillary Clinton

 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, right, met with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico City. Mr. Trump, who has vowed to build a wall along the border at Mexico’s expense, said the wall was discussed but not who would pay for it.

Donald Trump made a quick trip Wednesday to Mexico to meet with President Enrique Peña Nieto, shortly before the Republican presidential nominee was slated to give a speech on immigration in Phoenix.

The trip, which Mr. Trump announced late Tuesday, followed an invitation the Mexican president sent Friday to both Mr. Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, according to Mr. Peña Nieto’s office. The president’s office said the invitation “was well received by both campaign teams.”

The two men met in the Mexican president’s official residence, called Los Pinos, Wednesday afternoon and appeared before media to issue statements and answer questions immediately after.

Mr. Trump said after the meeting that Mexico had benefited more from a free-trade pact with the U.S., and said illegal immigration from Mexico was a priority, calling it a “humanitarian disaster.” Mr. Peña Nieto described the meeting as an “open and constructive discussion.”

The trip to Mexico represented a significant development on a subject that has been a controversial centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s campaign.

He has vowed repeatedly that he will build a wall along the southern border of the U.S. to keep out illegal immigrants, and has said he will persuade Mexico to pay for it. In his statement Wednesday, Mr. Trump said there was no discussion of who would pay for the wall.

In an interview with CNN in July, Mr. Peña Nieto said there was “no way” Mexico would pay for a border wall.

Mr. Trump also has said he is opposed to the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact that Mexico is party to and continues to support.

Mr. Trump set the stage for a showdown with the leadership of Mexico in a speech announcing his presidential bid in June last year, when he said the country was sending rapists and drug dealers across the border to the U.S.

Yet he also has pledged that he would find a way to have good relations with Mexico’s leaders, who, he has said, are outsmarting their American counterparts.

In a statement late Tuesday night, the Clinton campaign said that Mr. Trump “has painted Mexicans as ‘ rapists’ and criminals and has promised to deport 16 million people, including children and U.S. citizens. He has said we should force Mexico to pay for his giant border wall.” It added: “What ultimately matters is what Donald Trump says to voters in Arizona, not Mexico, and whether he remains committed to the splitting up of families and deportation of millions.”

Mr. Trump’s expected speech Wednesday evening on immigration comes after more than a week in which he and his advisers have given conflicting explanations of his deportation policy.

During the primary, he said he would expel all illegal immigrants from the U.S., but in recent days he has suggested focusing on those with criminal records.

Mr. Trump on Tuesday sought to quash any speculation that he was also softening on his promise to build a wall “From day one I said that I was going to build a great wall on the SOUTHERN BORDER, and much more,” he said on Twitter “Stop illegal immigration. Watch Wednesday!”

Many Mexicans were angered at the news of the meeting, in light of some of the things Mr. Trump has said about Mexico during his campaign over the past year.

“This is appeasement of the worst kind. Peña Nieto is like [Neville] Chamberlain to his Hitler,” said Alejandro Hope, a former Mexican intelligence official and security analyst, referring to the British prime minister who tried to appease Germany in the run-up to World War II.

Mr. Hope said the visit undercuts Mrs. Clinton’s argument that Mr. Trump doesn’t have the temperament to be president.

“For Trump, this makes perfect sense. He polishes his image,” said Mr. Hope. “What is Peña going to get out of this? Half price on the wall?”

Mr. Peña Nieto and his aides had debated in the past how to respond to the real-estate mogul, with some suggesting he take an aggressive stand against him, according to a person familiar with the meetings. But the president has said he shouldn’t take sides in a U.S. election and instead should appear above the fray, that person said.

But now the Mexican leader has inserted himself in the election through his invitation to both candidates, analysts said.

“I don’t know why Peña is doing this, especially now. It doesn’t help him at home, and brings him and Mexico into the middle of the U.S. election process (at least for a day); a fraught place for a foreign president to be,” Shannon O’Neil, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, wrote in an email.

Mexican officials were expected to try to use the occa- sion to get across Mexico’s views on immigration and trade, especially Nafta.

Mexican officials complain that the trade relationship has been distorted by both parties, with many Americans seeing Mexico and China as equally harmful for U.S. jobs. They emphasize that after 22 years of Nafta, the U.S. and Mexican economies have become tightly and beneficially joined.

“We want to project a positive image of Mexico based on objective data,” Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu said in a recent interview. “Our bilateral relation has strengthened over the past 25 years… but in recent months stereotypes have emerged, stereotypes based on a biased view of the Mexican community and bilateral relations.”

Today, 32 U.S. states annually export at least $1 billion of goods to Mexico. U.S.-made components make up more than a third of every dollar in products Mexico ships back north, Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said in a recent interview. U.S. components constitute only 3 cents of every dollar of products China exports to America, he said.

“Free trade isn’t the problem,” Mr. Guajardo said. “Today, the world competes in regions. Countries partner to set up production chains. Mexico shouldn’t be in the same basket as China.”

Some Mexicans suggested both politicians may need each other at a time when they are struggling. Mr. Trump lags behind in the polls and Mr. Peña Nieto has the lowest approval rating for a Mexican leader in two decades, largely due to a series of corruption scandals, tepid economic growth and rising violence.