How Much Will Trump’s Mexican Wall Cost?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 4:03PM EST · Published Jan 9, 7:00AM EST

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How Much Will Trump’s Mexican Wall Cost? — © Thinkstock

[cnxvideo id=”655240″ placement=”ros”]President-elect Donald Trump says that his proposed wall between Mexico and much of the southern U.S. border will cost $8 billion to $12 billion, which is a very broad range. Recently, he said the United States would underwrite the cost of the wall and recoup it from Mexico.

Most experts believe the wall will cost well above Trump’s estimate. Trump argues as a builder and real estate developer he should know the number. There is no evidence he has sent an army of engineers and builders to either measure the likely length of the wall or estimate the materials that would need to be used or the costs of labor. That makes his estimate no better than a guess.

A recent analysis in the MIT Technology Review put the cost of the wall at as much as $39 billion. Its measurements are based on a wall that is only 1,000 miles long, with a height of 50 feet and a foundation that would go 10 feet below ground level. The estimates take into account concrete and steel costs, along with cost of labor.

The MIT Technology Review work ignores the proposed length of the Trump wall, so, despite its completeness, it has to be inaccurate.

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Based on a Government Accounting Office estimate, calculated with the use of past construction of border walls, the average cost would be $2.8 million a mile. With that as a start, CNBC put the price at between $15 billion and $25 billion. However, the cost is based on a 1,300-mile wall.

Experts point out the several estimates do not take into account that the Trump wall would only cover 1,000 miles because rivers and mountains act as natural deterrents to those who want to cross into the United States from Mexico. At that length, a Washington Post came up with an estimate of $25 billion.

How much would the Trump wall cost? Even with detailed analysis and estimates, the final number will depend on the fact that how much money will be involved is like estimates for Navy ships, war planes and Air Force One. Trump’s number is almost certainly low, but it is impossible to prove otherwise, for now.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.