How much does it cost to build President Trump 's "Great Trump Wall" on the Mexican border?

ByMike Licht

President Trump has signed the Presidential Decree to realize the "Construction of walls at the border with the Mexico" which was listed on the commitment of the election campaign on January 25, 2017. A huge wall that will be built on the Mexican border to shut out illegal immigrants, drugs, and criminals "Great Trump WallBut, how much expense would be required for the construction?MIT Technology ReviewIs calculated.

Bad Math Props Up Trump's Border Wall
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602494/bad-math-props-up-trumps-border-wall/


Presented as a promise to be executed shortly after President Trump has assumed office as president is "100 day plan". As described in the statement "Building a wall along the border with Mexico and making Mexico bear the cost of building it" in the "Action to eradicate illegal immigrants", President Trump has decided to build a wall at the Mexican border Presidential Decree is issued. President Trump said, "The cost of wall construction is about 8 billion to 12 billion dollars (about 9150 billion to 1.3 trillion yen)Trial calculationHowever, MIT Technology Review points out that this is a big mistake.

President Cardamom initially proposed to build a wall at all 1951 miles (about 3141 km), the border with Mexico, but later on the border of the mountains and other "difficult places where immigration is difficult" I'm commenting on installing walls in about half.

Also at the construction point of the wall that President Trump has conceived, there has already been a fence for 653 miles (1050 km). This fence was set up to prevent illegal entry by automobiles and pedestrians, and it costs 2.3 billion dollars (about 263 billion yen) from 2006 to install these fences. If you decide to build a wall instead of this fence and make a wall with a height of 35 to 65 feet (about 10 to 20 meters) using steel as promised by President Cardo, It is obvious that it doubles it.


In estimating the construction cost of the wall, the length shall be 1000 mile (approximately 1600 km), which is about half of the border, and the height shall be 50 feet (about 15 m) which is halfway between the assumed 35 to 65 feet. At this time, considering the sense of scale, from the viewpoint of the structure, it is necessary for the wall to grow at least 15 feet (about 4.6 meters) in the ground. It also seems to lead to the prevention of illegal immigrants trying to dig through the ground and pass under the wall if the walls are 15 feet in the ground. In addition, it seems that one foot (about 30 cm) of wall thickness is required to stabilize the 50 feet high wall and make it solid enough.

That's why it's about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) in length, 50 feet in height (about 20 meters including the part buried in the ground), the concrete of the material required for constructing a 30 cm thick wall · And the labor cost when actually building the wall are calculated as follows.

·concrete
Considering the total length of about 1600 km, the height is about 20 meters and 30 cm thick considering that it is stretched in the ground, concrete of about 9.7 million cubic meters is required for simple calculation. Since the cost of concrete is 900 dollars per cubic meter (about 100,000 yen), it costs about 9 billion dollars (about 1 trillion yen) for the entire wall.

·steel
The amount of reinforcing bars that form the basis of the wall is about 3% of the amount of concrete used. Then, the mass of the rebar on the entire wall is calculated to be 2.3 billion kilograms. Steel is 2 dollars per kilogram (about 230 yen), so the material cost of steel used for making walls is 4.6 billion dollars (about 527 billion yen).

· Labor cost
A certain structural engineer says, "When constructing public roads and other huge buildings in the United States, the total cost will be two to three times the material cost". This also applies to the case of construction of huge buildings in the past and also to the huge walls that the United States built in the West Bank area of ​​Israel's Jordan River. That is why if you calculate in the same way on the walls that are built on the Mexican border, the labor cost is about the same as or twice as much as the material cost, which is estimated to be about 13.6 billion to 27 billion dollars (about 1.55 trillion to 3 trillion yen) Yes.

ByTim Green

In other words, it is estimated that the cost required for construction of walls will be between $ 27 billion and $ 40 billion (about 4.58 trillion yen).