Trump Insists Mexico Will Pay for Wall After U.S. Begins the Work

President-elect Donald J. Trump said in an interview on Friday morning that financing a border wall with taxpayer money would allow the work to begin more quickly. But he insisted that Mexico will ultimately reimburse the United States for its construction.

“We’re going to get reimbursed,” Mr. Trump said during a brief telephone interview. “But I don’t want to wait that long. But you start, and then you get reimbursed.”

The president-elect made the comments after Republicans on Capitol Hill began discussing ways to include money for construction of the border wall in spending bills that need to be passed this spring. That caused some speculation that Mr. Trump was retreating on his oft-repeated promise to make Mexico pay for the wall.

In the interview, the president-elect insisted that Mexico would ultimately reimburse the United States. He said that payment would most likely emerge from his efforts to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with the Mexican government.

“It’s going to be part of everything,” Mr. Trump said of the cost of building the wall. “We are going to be making a much better deal. It’s a deal that never should have been signed.”

But he said the trade negotiations will take time, and that he supported the idea of using taxpayer money to begin construction of the border wall “in order to speed up the process.”

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