Donald Trump Border Wall: Mexican Cement Maker GCC Offers Services

“Mexicans will pay for the wall!” read a September tweet from President-elect Donald Trump, who said throughout his election campaign he will build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border to curb the inflow of illegal immigrants. Now, a leading Mexican cement maker has come forward to offer services to the real estate tycoon to help build the wall.

Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua (GCC) is willing to make the proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexican southern border a thing of reality.

“We can’t be choosy,” Enrique Escalante, CEO of GCC told Reuters Wednesday. “We’re an important producer in that area and we have to respect our clients on both sides of the border.”

Based in Chihuahua state, GCC is one of the biggest cement manufacturers in Mexico. It has three plants in the U.S., from where it generates about 70 percent of its sales, according to Reuters. One of the plants is in Texas and two distribution centers in the state’s Amarillo and El Paso cities. The company also has plants manufacturing concrete, aggregates, asphalt and building materials in El Paso and Las Cruces, New Mexico.

The company’s shares are trading at their highest since 2008, and Mexican multinational cement company Cemex owns 23 percent stake.

“For the business we’re in, Trump is a candidate that does favor the industry quite a bit,” Escalante said.

During the election campaign, Trump told his supporters that he would build a “big, beautiful, powerful” wall along the border, which is roughly 2,000 miles long.

“I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively,” Trump said during the start of his campaign on June 16, 2015. “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall.”

However, the 70-year-old did not mention the wall at all in his victory speech on election night, Nov. 8.

The estimated cost for such a structure could range anywhere between $15 billion to $25 billion, Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute told CNBC last October.