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U.S. President Donald Trump said he had a friendly phone call with Mexico's president on Friday but asserted he will renegotiate trade deals and other aspects of the countries' ties because Mexico has "beat us to a pulp" in the past.
Financial markets took news of the call as a sign that a crisis in U.S-Mexican relations had eased, a day after Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto scrapped a meeting set for Washington next week over Trump's insistence that Mexico pay for his planned border wall. Mexico's peso rose on the news.
Mexico's government said in a statement that Peña Nieto and Trump agreed not to talk publicly for now about payment for the multibillion-dollar wall and described the call as "constructive and productive."
The White House said that during the call Trump and Peña Nieto recognized their differences on the wall but agreed to work them out. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Trump had agreed to not publicly discuss how the wall would be paid for.
During a joint news conference at the White House with visiting British Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump described his call with Peña Nieto as "very, very friendly." But Trump showed no signs of backing off his threats to tear up deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the United States, Mexico and Canada.
"We are going to be working on a fair relationship and a new relationship" with Mexico, Trump said. "But the United States cannot continue to lose vast amounts of business, vast amounts of companies and millions and millions of people losing their jobs.
"That won't happen with me."
Trump's fresh insistence that Mexico pay for the wall and Peña Nieto's cancellation of his visit had deepened a crisis between the two countries in the first week of Trump's presidency.
