With his threatened Mexican tariffs now on the backburner, President Donald Trump was looking to claim victory even as some of his Democratic challengers for the White House criticised him for overselling a deal that mostly ramps up existing efforts.
Trump defended the agreement reached by US and Mexican negotiators to head off the 5 per cent tax on all Mexican goods that Trump had threatened to impose Monday as he tried to pressure the country to do more to stem the flow of Central American migrants across the US southern border.
But he also dangled the prospect Sunday of renewing his threat if the US ally doesn't cooperate to his liking.
"There is now going to be great cooperation between Mexico & the USA, something that didn't exist for decades," Trump tweeted before spending a second day at his Virginia golf course.
"However," he added, "if for some unknown reason" that doesn't happen, "we can always go back to our previous, very profitable, position of Tariffs."
"The president has completely overblown what he reports to have achieved. These are agreements that Mexico had already made, in some cases months ago," said Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, speaking on ABC's "This Week."
''They might have accelerated the time table, but by and large the president achieved nothing except to jeopardise the most important trading relationship that the United States of America has."
Another 2020 candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, chastised Trump for using tariffs as a threat and operating a "trade policy based on tweets."
But acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, speaking on "Fox News Sunday" insisted "all of it is new," including the agreement to dispatch around 6,000 National Guard troops a move Mexico has described as an "acceleration."
"We have been trying to get some of these Border Actions for a long time, as have other administrations, but were not able to get them, or get them in full, until our signed agreement with Mexico," he wrote, claiming that if former President Barack Obama had made the deals he has, "the Corrupt Media would be hailing them as Incredible, & a National Holiday would be immediately declared."
He also teased the idea that more was agreed to than was announced Friday, saying that "some things" and "one in particular" that had been left out of the release but would be "announced at the appropriate time."
She told CBS' "Face the Nation" that the countries' "joint declaration of principles ... gives us the base for the road map that we have to follow in the incoming months on immigration and cooperation on asylum issues and development in Central America."