President Trump’s campaign promise mandated a concrete border wall to stop illegal immigration from Mexico. The Mexicans must finance and build the concrete structure. We the People must create a mutual agreement with Mexico for financing and construction to fulfill the President’s promise. Usable silica sand is the key.
First, think of a skyscraper as a Trump Tower. Skyscrapers around the world are made of concrete. The main ingredient of concrete is silica sand with a cement binder. The beautiful glass facade of buildings like Trump Tower is made from sand processed at 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit. The foundations, driveways and sidewalks, basements, and garages of single-family homes are made of usable sand and cement. The tape of roads, bridges and tunnels that connect the world have silica sand as the main ingredient.
Usable silica sand is the long tail keyword here. There is a worldwide shortage of the product. The desperate shortage does not end with the construction of buildings in the US.
From Jim Hightower’s Lowdown Newsletter we learn that in four years, from 2012 to 2016, China consumed more construction sand than the US did between 1900 and 2000. And the city of Shanghai has built more skyscrapers in the last ten years than there. They are in New York City.
Wait a minute, you say. While the EPA was still going, we were told that deserts are growing around the world at an alarming rate. How can there be a shortage of sand? Unfortunately, desert sand is not suitable for construction. The pellets are too small and round with less than the minimum compression ratio for construction or fracking.
That’s right, fracking. Companies like ExxonMobil and Halliburton use sand to fracture underground shale deposits to find fuel trapped in those rock formations in states like Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota.
Big oil companies in Wisconsin, known as the mother of all frackers, are drilling wells nearly two miles deep. The mother-frackers throw ten million pounds of precious sand on the rock, trying to suck the last measly drops of peak oil out of the ground. There are already one hundred fracking wells in the United States. The United States will use 120 million tons of fracking sand this year, increasing by 30 percent each year.
Fortunately, for the construction of the Mexico Border Wall, the president has been successful in reversing Obama’s land policies in places like the picturesque Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. Thanks to President Trump’s reversal of mining regulations in these remote and environmentally sensitive alluvial deposit areas along streams and riverbeds, the availability of silica sand will increase. Don’t worry, habitat protections for endangered species will also be reduced despite opposition from the tourism and conservation lobby and some Democratic lawmakers.
Governments around the world, including China and Indonesia, have made efforts to reduce sand extraction. The Mexican government stopped legitimate sand mining companies from operating when it discovered that not only was it destroying its environment, but the sand was being used in the United States.
Cemex, a small Mexican sand mining corporation with fourteen billion in annual sales, mines three hundred thousand cubic yards of the beautiful sand of Monterey Bay, CA each year. They are exempt from federal regulations that protect our beaches. His stock rose significantly when Trump was elected on the promise of a border wall.
Okay, let’s get to it. Here are the nuts and bolts of the plan to build the Mexico border wall.
It will take two years to acquire the property and complete the design. It is not part of the construction plan, the American taxpayers will pay for that part. With Dodd-Frank easing, US banks will help recover the full amount under this plan, as will be explained here.
Thanks to automation in the construction industry, it will take two years with only two hundred unskilled workers to build the wall. The workers could be chosen from a pool of imprisoned illegals. The Department of Justice will offer repatriation in Mexico and early release for their participation in the construction workforce.
The Government then obtains a $25 billion thirty-year construction bond or capital improvement bond from a Mexican bank as a financing mechanism. The president’s henchmen estimate the cost of the wall at twenty-five billion dollars. Banamex, Mexico, a subsidiary of Citigroup, or Mexico’s largest bank, Banco do Brasil, with $550 billion in assets, are likely options. With the backing of the United States Congress, the bank can rely on payment from the second year of construction.
Congress may establish a public-private venture to license sixteen Mexican sand mining corporations to mine sand at locations in the U.S. Grant those Mexican corporations warranties for ten years, with the expectation of a gross resale of twenty thousand million dollars per year, per corporation, of the precious product of controlled cost and price.
The taxing authority is the US Congress, which will impose a sand mining excise tax of three percent, equal to a minimum of $10 billion per year in aggregate, gross resale of sand, as an instrument of refund.
Goldman Sachs may act as debt service manager for accounts receivable turnover and assigned holder of tax revenue deposits. By bond contract, deposits are held, interest-free, for one year. GS legally leverages that amount at one hundred billion times ten billion, for the construction of new buildings not related to the Wall. Remember, GS withholds taxable income for one year before the refund begins.
After the first year, Goldman Sachs begins to pay, with excise taxes on sand mining in Mexico, to pay off the bonus. GS realizes a substantial taxable gain over the thirty-year maturity of the bond from the leveraged loans. The United States government benefits from the tax revenue. Mexicans have happily built and paid for the wall.
