Trump’s New Border Conflict of Interest

As President-elect Donald Trump promises to push ahead with a border wall and threatens to penalize companies that move production to Mexico, the final touches are being put on two pipelines that snake from Texas shale fields across the southern U.S. border. The projects, which have a combined value of $1.4 billion, will supply the Comisión Federal de Electricidad, Mexico’s state-owned electric utility, with U.S. natural gas that will lower power costs in Mexico—including those at factories churning out everything from car parts to flatscreen TVs for American consumers. The utility contracted in 2015 with a transnational consortium that includes Mexican-based Carso Energy, to develop and operate the Comanche Trail Pipeline and the Trans-Pecos Pipeline.

The consortium brings together an unlikely cast of characters: Carlos Slim, the billionaire who controls Carso Group; Texas billionaire Kelcy Warren, chief executive officer of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, who donated more than $100,000 to Trump’s campaign; and Trump himself, who owned as much as $1 million worth of shares in Energy Transfer Partners according to his federal candidate disclosures in 2015 and still had as much as $50,000 worth as recently as May, according to his most recent disclosure. (Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks says the president-elect sold his shares in the company last year.) Trump’s pick for energy secretary, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, was a member of Energy Transfer’s board until the end of December; he’s selling his shares in the company and pledged not to participate in any matters that could affect them for at least two years.