(MEXICO CITY) — A senior government official says Mexico's president is "considering" canceling next week's visit to Washington following President Donald Trump's order to begin construction of a wall between the two countries.

The decision to rethink the visit comes amid growing outrage in Mexico, and a sense among many that President Enrique Pena Nieto has been too weak in the face of Trump's tough policy stance.

The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the administration "is considering" scrapping the Jan. 31 visit. "That's what I can tell you." </s> (CNN) Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has called off an official trip to Washington to meet with President Donald Trump after a tense phone call brought the two leaders to a policy-driven standstill.

Peña Nieto was tentatively planning the trip for March, a White House official said, but the official confirmed to CNN that the trip was put on hold following the phone call, which took place on February 20.

According to The Washington Post, which first reported the cancellation , officials from both countries told the paper that Peña Nieto "called off the plan after Trump would not agree to publicly affirm Mexico's position that it would not fund construction of a border wall."

A White House official told CNN that any meeting would be awkward and counterproductive given Trump's vow that Mexico would pay for the wall.

The official said the call was "less hostile" than the one that occurred between the two leaders a year ago, but "no more productive" than that call either.

Read More </s> The president of Mexico halted upcoming plans to visit the White House after a reportedly tense phone conversation with President Donald Trump, according to the Washington Post.

U.S. and Mexican officials told the Post that President Enrique Peña Nieto called off his visit to Washington D.C. after Trump refused his request to publicly affirm Mexico’s ongoing stance that the country will not pay for a border wall between the two countries during a phone call on Tuesday.

President Peña Nieto has long maintained that Mexico will not pay for Trump’s plans to fortify the border with a wall, as the country finds the gesture offensive.

The officials who were familiar with the call spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity because the 50-minute call was confidential.

A White House official confirmed with CNN that Peña Nieto’s meeting with Trump was tentatively scheduled for March, but was placed on hold after their conversation.

A three-sentence White House readout of the phone call did not specifically mention Trump’s multibillion-dollar border wall, but it did note that the president “underscored his commitment to expanding cooperation between the United States and Mexico on security, trade, and immigration.”

According to the Washington Post, Peña Nieto and Trump spent a “considerable portion” of the phone call discussing the border wall.

A Mexican official told the paper that Trump “lost his temper” during Tuesday’s conversation. U.S. officials said Trump was frustrated and exasperated because he thought Peña Nieto was being unreasonable for expecting him to walk back plans for his controversial campaign promise, according to the Post.

Leaked transcripts of a Jan. 27, 2017, phone call between the two leaders reportedly show Trump insisting that his wall was “the least important thing” to talk about while adding that “politically [it] might be the most important.”

During the conversation, both leaders agreed that talking about the wall was unproductive, but when Peña Nieto said, “Mexico cannot pay for that wall,” Trump responded: “You cannot say that to the press.”

“The press is going to go with that, and I cannot live with that,” Trump told Peña Nieto, according to the transcripts. “You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances.”

A White House official told CNN that Tuesday’s call was “less hostile” than last year’s conversation, but not any more productive. </s> Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Thursday canceled a meeting with US President Donald Trump that had been set for Tuesday after renewed tensions over Trump’s plan to build a wall on the border.

“This morning we have informed the White House that I will not attend the meeting scheduled for next Tuesday with the POTUS,” Peña Nieto tweeted.

Earlier Thursday morning, Trump had tweeted that it would be better to skip the meeting if Peña Nieto continued to insist Mexico would not pay for the wall, which he had again said as recently as Wednesday evening.

Trump’s pushback came after Peña Nieto said — again — on Wednesday that his country “will not pay for any wall,” Trump tweeted that they should just skip their planned meeting at the White House.

“If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting,” Trump tweeted.

In an earlier tweet, he noted the US’s trade deficit with Mexico and what he said were the American job losses caused by NAFTA.

On Wednesday night, Pena Nieto had said he did not see a need to cancel his trip — but reiterated that he wouldn’t fund the wall.

“Mexico does not believe in walls. I’ve said time again; Mexico will not pay for any wall,” he said in a video statement posted to Twitter and translated by CNN from Spanish.

The back-and-forth between the two leaders — which began last year during the very first days of the Trump campaign when he called some Mexicans entering the US criminals and rapists and tensions lingered throughout the campaign. They escalated over the last 24 hours when Trump took executive action on Wednesday to begin the process of erecting a wall.

The President announced the move while a high-level Mexican delegation was visiting the White House — the first foreign representatives to visit since Trump took office — for meetings with top officials, including Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and adviser Jared Kushner.

Peña Nieto said he would wait for a final report from his top officials in Washington, and previous meetings with Mexican legislators, before deciding which steps he would take next.

Peña Nieto also said he had ordered government agencies to step up protection for immigrants.

“I’ve asked for the minister of Foreign Relations to re-enforce protection measures to our citizens,” he said. He added that the 50 Mexican Consulates in the US will be used to defend the rights of immigrants in the country. He also issued a call to action to legislators and civil organizations to help immigrants.

Peña Nieto closed his message by saying that Mexico offers and expects respect.

“Mexico offers its friendship to the people of the United States and expresses its wish to arrive at agreements with its government, deals that will be in favor of Mexico and the Mexicans,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Trump signed two executive orders directing the construction of a wall on the US-Mexico border, boosting border patrol forces and increasing the number of immigration enforcement officers who carry out deportations.

Meanwhile, the Mexican officials that arrived Wednesday were expected to lay the groundwork for Peña Nieto’s visit next week, which Mexican diplomats see as an important opportunity to get past the anti-Mexico rhetoric Trump used during the campaign and a chance to put the US-Mexico relationship back on track.

“There is … frustration with our government and ourselves that we have not been able to tell the story of this important relationship,” a Mexican diplomat told CNN ahead of the visit. “There are a lot of stereotypes of Mexicans in the US, but there are also stereotypes of Americans in Mexico. It is in the interest of both governments to explain what this relationship is and what we can do together.”

In a Monday speech, Peña Nieto said his government is prepared to negotiate with the US if Mexico’s national sovereignty is respected. He laid out economic integration and respect for the rights of migrants and the money they send home as his nation’s key negotiating points.

Trump has suggested some of the $25 billion in annual remittances that migrants return home would be retained to pay for the border wall — a project Mexico opposes and which Peña Nieto has said Mexico would never pay for.

“Neither confrontation nor submission. Dialogue is the solution,” Peña Nieto said Monday.

This won’t be the first meeting for the two men. Trump flew to Mexico City during his campaign to meet Peña Nieto and said they discussed a wall Trump has vowed to build on the US southern border, but not his demand that Mexico pay for it — an assertion the Mexican president later disputed.

“At the start of the conversation with Donald Trump, I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall,” Peña Nieto tweeted, after their meeting.

The visit was widely viewed as a public relations disaster for Peña Nieto. </s> MEXICO CITY — When Donald J. Trump called some Mexican immigrants rapists, threatened to deport millions of them and promised to build a wall to keep others out, Mexican officials counseled caution, saying it was merely bluster from an unlikely candidate who, if elected, would never follow through.

Now, after just five days in office, President Trump is looking a lot like Candidate Trump — and the Mexicans are furious.

With just a few strokes of the pen on Wednesday, the new American president signed an executive order to beef up the nation’s deportation force and start construction on a new wall between the nations. Adding to the perceived insult was the timing of the order: It came on the first day of talks between top Mexican officials and their counterparts in Washington, and just days before a meeting between the two countries’ presidents.

The action was enough to prompt President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico to consider scrapping his plans to visit the White House on Tuesday, according to Mexican officials. In a video message delivered over Twitter on Wednesday night, Mr. Peña Nieto did not address whether he would cancel the meeting, saying only that future steps would be taken in consultation with the country’s lawmakers. Instead, he reiterated his commitment to protect the interests of Mexico and the Mexican people, and chided the move in Washington to continue with the wall. </s> Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto says he will not attend a planned Jan. 31 meeting with President Donald J. Trump, hours after Trump tweeted the meeting should be canceled if Mexico won't pay for a border wall.Pena Nieto's message on Twitter ended days of uncertainty about what he would do. </s> Mexico's president is "considering" canceling next week's visit to Washington following President Donald Trump's order to begin construction of a wall between the two countries, a senior official said.

In a nationally televised speech late Wednesday, President Enrique Pena Nieto condemned the U.S. decision and repeated that Mexico would not pay for the wall despite Trump's avowals that it would.

"I regret and reject the decision of the U.S. to build the wall," he said. "I have said time and again, Mexico will not pay for any wall."

Pena Nieto did not directly mention whether he would make the trip to Washington on Jan. 31, but said he would await reports from the high-level team of Mexican officials currently meeting with Trump administration officials in Washington.

"Based on the final report from the Mexican officials who are in Washington right now ... I will make decisions about what to do next," he said.

After talking tough about the wall, he held out an olive branch, saying "Mexico re-affirms its friendship with the people of the United States, and its willingness to reach agreements with its government."

The decision to possibly rethink the visit comes amid growing outrage in Mexico, and a sense among many that Pena Nieto has been too weak in the face of Trump's tough policy stance.

The senior official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press the administration "is considering" scrapping Pena Nieto's visit to the U.S. "That's what I can tell you."

It was not clear when a final decision may be made.

Trump's order came the same day Mexico's foreign relations and economy secretaries arrived in Washington, and its timing was seen by many in Mexico as a slap in the face.

Critics of Pena Nieto - whose approval ratings were just 12 percent in a recent survey, the lowest for any Mexican president in the polling era - have hammered him for his perceived weakness on Trump. Opposition politicians urged him Wednesday to call off the trip.

"The position is very clear," said Ricardo Anaya Cortes, president of the conservative opposition National Action Party. "Either one cancels the meeting with Donald Trump, or one attends it to say publicly and with absolute firmness that Mexico rejects the wall and we will not pay a single cent for it."

Trump has also promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Analyst Jorge Zepeda Patterson argued that Pena Nieto should keep the meeting as scheduled, saying Mexico should exhaust all possibilities for negotiating to minimize damage. He said Pena Nieto should try to reach an agreement that's enough to let Trump claim victory and then move on to another foil.

"Trump is more interested in boasting of an immediate success than an ambitious result. He is interested in appearances," Zepeda said.

The U.S. president has also promised to step up deportations. He launched his campaign with remarks calling immigrants crossing in illegally from Mexico criminals, drug dealers and "rapists." Trump added that "some" were presumably good people, but the comments nonetheless deeply offended many Mexicans.

Pena Nieto was roundly criticized after inviting candidate Trump to Mexico City last August and disappointed many of his countrymen by not publicly confronting Trump on the wall.

On Tuesday, ahead of their trip to Washington, the economy and foreign relations secretaries suggested that Mexico could leave NAFTA if negotiations with Washington are unsatisfactory - though that would not be the first choice.

Already Mexico is feeling the effects of the new tone from Washington. The Mexican peso has sharply devalued since Trump was elected, and several high-profile business ventures have been canceled amid threats to impose a border tax on goods made in Mexico and exported to the United States.

Copyright 2017 FOX 11 Los Angeles : Download our mobile app for breaking news alerts or to watch FOX 11 News | Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Be a citizen journalist for FOX 11 and get paid – download the Fresco News App today. </s> U.S. President Donald Trump meets Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto during the their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany July 7, 2017. Reuters/Carlos Barria
• Mexico's president will reportedly no longer visit the White House after he argued with President Donald Trump over his long-promised border wall.
• Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto attempted to persuade Trump to publicly admit that Mexico won't pay for the border wall.
• Trump promised repeatedly during his 2016 presidential campaign that he would force Mexico to pay for it.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto reportedly backed out of plans to visit the White House after a heated argument with President Donald Trump this week over his long-promised wall along the US-Mexico border.

Trump "lost his temper" during a nearly hour-long phone call on February 20, one Mexican official told The Washington Post. Peña Nieto had tried to persuade Trump to publicly acknowledge that Mexico will refuse to pay for the border wall, as Trump repeatedly vowed during his presidential campaign.

US officials told The Post that Trump was frustrated and exasperated by the call, as Trump believed it was unfair to expect him to renege on one of his favorite campaign refrains.

A White House readout of the call made no mention of the border wall argument, instead saying that Trump and Peña Nieto exchanged condolences over recent tragedies in each leader's country — a mass shooting in Florida and a helicopter accident in Oaxaca.

Prototypes for U.S. President Donald Trump's border wall with Mexico are seen behind the current border fence in this picture taken from the Mexican side of the border in Tijuana, Mexico, January 27, 2018. Reuters/Jorge Duenes "President Trump underscored his commitment to expanding cooperation between the United States and Mexico on security, trade, and immigration," the readout added.

The call marks the second time in a little more than a year that Peña Nieto and Trump have cancelled a planned meeting after an angry stand-off on the border wall.

In a January 2017 phone call, Trump told Peña Nieto he didn't want to meet with him because he "cannot live" with Peña Nieto publicly saying that Mexico wouldn't pay for the wall.

Trump urged Peña Nieto to say, "We will work it out" if either man was asked about payments for the border wall, according to a transcript obtained by The Washington Post last August.

"The fact is we are both in a little bit of a political bind because I have to have Mexico pay for the wall — I have to," Trump said. "I have been talking about it for a two-year period, and the reason I say they are going to pay for the wall is because Mexico has made a fortune out of the stupidity of US trade representatives."

The leaders' latest spat comes as Mexico heads into a presidential election later this year, prompting Peña Nieto to take a tough stance on Trump's border wall and avoid appearing to acquiesce to his demands, which Mexicans overwhelmingly view as humiliating and offensive. </s> Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has reportedly scrapped his plans to visit the White House after a contentious call with President Trump Donald John TrumpAccuser says Trump should be afraid of the truth Woman behind pro-Trump Facebook page denies being influenced by Russians Shulkin says he has White House approval to root out 'subversion' at VA MORE discussing his proposed border wall.

U.S. and Mexican officials familiar with the call told The Washington Post that Peña Nieto and Trump reached an impasse while discussing the wall. Peña Nieto reportedly asked Trump to publicly affirm Mexico’s stance that it will not pay for the wall, but Trump refused to cave.

A Mexican official told the paper that Trump “lost his temper” during the 50-minute call. U.S. officials said that Trump was “exasperated” and “frustrated” because he thought Peña Nieto’s expectation was unreasonable, according to the Post.

Peña Nieto’s visit was not yet confirmed, but was expected to take place sometime in the coming weeks. The Mexican president is facing a presidential election in July.

The border wall, one of Trump’s most divisive campaign promises, has been a source of contention between the two nations. Peña Nieto canceled a planned meeting with Trump in January 2017 due to conflict with Trump over the North American Free Trade Agreement and the border wall.

Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States, told The Washington Post that Trump has “painted” the relationship between the two countries “into a corner” with his insistence that Mexico would pay for the wall.

“Even from the get-go, the idea of Mexico paying for the wall was never going to fly,” Sarukhan said. “[Trump’s] relationship with Mexico isn’t strategically driven. It’s not even business; it’s personal, driven by motivations and triggers, and that’s a huge problem. It could end up with the U.S. asking itself, ‘Who lost Mexico?’ ”

Trump said repeatedly during the campaign that Mexico would foot the bill for the border wall expansion. And during a phone call in August, Trump pleaded with Peña Nieto to not say publicly that his government would not pay for the wall, according to leaked transcripts.

“If you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that,” Trump said at the time.

Trump’s proposed framework for immigration legislation includes $25 billion in funding for the wall.
Mexican senior officials say President Peña Nieto may cancel his plans to visit the White House next Tuesday, January 31, because of President Trump's actions.