We need to realize that the economic situation between Mexico and the United States is not just one in which we trade with one another. We make things together. We have shared production platforms. Cross-border trade is part of a single production process, and while apparently the Trump administration will seek to re-examine elements of that production platform, it is what it is and won't be easily dismantled.

Walls and barriers alone are insufficient to insure security.

As former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano pointed out, if you build a 50-foot wall, you'll soon be confronted with a 51-foot ladder. You need a strategy that involves layered defense: deployed patrols, sophisticated sensor equipment, and surveillance from the air. That is what has had a positive impact over the last generation.

America should be working more with the Mexicans to prevent the flow of guns going south into Mexico that have fueled so much of the violence there, and the smuggling of cash and the money laundering that transnational criminal organizations have instituted in North America, including in the United States.

I think there's no question that the barriers, the fences and in certain urban areas, the walls, have had an important effect in terms of increasing the manageability and the security of the border. But in fact as Secretary of Homeland Security General John Kelly acknowledged at his confirmation hearing, walls and barriers alone are insufficient to insure security.

There have been enormous advances since 9/11 to build a very robust set of targeting procedures and watch lists to screen travelers coming to the United States. The National Targeting Center in Virginia run by Customs and Border Protection checks the background of every traveler who seeks to enter the country.

The potential of Mexico, Canada and the United States is enormous. We have a combined population of half a billion people; peaceful trade-friendly borders that are the envy of the world; the prospect of energy independence is within reach and will change the geopolitical situation of United States; we do a trillion dollars in trade among the three countries; more than 18,000 American companies are involved in foreign direct investment in Mexico and Canada; an increasing number of Mexican companies are creating jobs in the United States.