Mexico City:Â Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said on Thursday he had scrapped plans to meet Donald Trump next week after the USÂ president tweeted Mexico should cancel the meeting if it was not prepared to pay for his proposed border wall.
"This morning we informed the White House that I will not attend the work meeting planned for next Tuesday with the POTUS," Pena Nieto said on Twitter.
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"Mexico reiterates its willingness to work with the United States to reach accords that favour both nations."
Mr Trump had hours earlier used a series of tweets to call for Mexico to cancel the visit to Washington if it was not prepared to pay for a proposed border wall.
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The U.S. has a 60 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico. It has been a one-sided deal from the beginning of NAFTA with massive numbers...
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 26 January 2017
of jobs and companies lost. If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 26 January 2017
The summit between the two leaders next week was expected to address a relationship frayed by the new US president's determination to build a wall along their shared border and to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
A Mexican government minister said the cancellation would cause uncertainty.
Even before Mr Trump's tweets, Mr Pena Nieto faced growing pressure at home to scrap the meeting over objections to the wall.
Mr Trump signed new executive orders this week, including one authorising the planned wall, just as a Mexican delegation led by Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray arrived at the White House for talks.
The timing caused outrage in Mexico, with prominent politicians seeing at as a deliberate snub to the government's efforts to engage with Mr Trump, who has for months used Mexico as a political punching bag.
Mexico's peso reversed gains immediately after Mr Trump's message on Twitter.
Congress moving ahead
On Thursday, leaders of the Republican-controlled USÂ Congress said they planned to move ahead on funding the border wall, which they projected would cost between $US12 billion and $US15 billion.
"So we intend to address the wall issue ourselves and the president can deal with his relations with other countries," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said at a news conference in Philadelphia, where Republicans were holding a retreat.
Mr Trump was due to address the group later in the day, as was British Prime Minister Theresa May.
House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, asked if lawmakers were worried about the USÂ relationship with Mexico, said, "I think we'll be fine."
Mr Trump has ruffled feathers with Mexico from the start of his presidential campaign in 2015, saying that the country sent criminals and rapists to the United States and promising to build a wall along the border that he said Mexico would pay for.
Mexico has long said it will not pay for such a project.
Mr Trump has also threatened to penalise USÂ companies that use Mexican manufacturing plants to produce goods for the United States.
Former foreign minister Jorge Castaneda said the Mexican government should have cancelled the planned summit earlier in the week when it became clear that Mr Trump was going to go ahead with measures to build the wall and clamp down on immigration.
"There is an atmosphere of crisis in the United States and it is going to last a long time. We are going to have to get used to living like this," he said on Mexican radio.
Reuters