BORDER/MIKE PENCE/NAFTA/TRADE DEALS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump’s announcement Thursday [4-4-19] that he would be willing to sideline a new trilateral trade pact with Canada and Mexico — a move that would allow him to impose the auto tariffs he has been threatening to unveil — couldn’t have come at a worse time for Mike Pence. As Trump sat in the Oval Office, telling reporters that border security ‘is more important to me than the USMCA,’ the administration’s proposed replacement for NAFTA, his vice president was hours away from kicking off a multistate tour to promote the renegotiated trade deal. The tour, which targets states that will be crucial to the president’s reelection bid, would begin in Pence’s home state of Indiana at Lamb Farms Inc., a family-run business producing a trio of crops — corn, wheat and soybeans — that have been swept up in Trump’s trade wars. In the coming weeks, Pence will ‘travel all over to swing districts selling [the president’s] trade message,’ a senior White House official told POLITICO, outlining a schedule of stops in farm towns and agricultural regions across Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and other 2020 battlegrounds.”
–Gabby Orr, “Trump’s border threats jam up Pence’s trade tour,” Politico, April 5, 2019 6:22 pm