During his speech, Vicente Fox said he arrived in the Bay Area to talk with students about ideas and provocations.
The former Mexican president visited a group of student journalists and was pleased to see the racial diversity at the school compared to the United Nations.
When he addressed a larger crowd a short time later, Fox started out by praising NAFTA, the trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Fox has been seen as President Trump's main challenger and like Trump has used Twitter to voice his concerns regarding the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico.
He told the crowd that Trump has done a number of things wrong, such as not accepting refugees, trying to break a trade agreement, bombing another country, and trying to build a wall at the border. "That wall, that f wall that we are not going to pay for, we Mexicans," Fox said. That is going to cost you, you U.S. citizens $35 billion. With $35 billion you can create immediately, $10 million jobs."
Fox also told students that Mexico has lost manufacturing jobs to Central America and advised students in Palo Alto to seek jobs in the area of information and technology.
This week, Fox will visit Stanford to meet with his good friend, former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. Then, he will head to UC Berkeley because he said the city is "padre," which translates to cool in English.