WASHINGTON Having failed to force Mexico to pay for a border wall as he promised he would, President Donald Trump on Friday repeated his false claim that a tweaked North American Free Trade Agreement is effectively making that country pay.

We will be making billions and billions of dollars a year more money. And that is paying for the wall. Many, many times over, Trump said in another rambling, hourlong news conference filled with such falsehoods.

What we save on that just with Mexico will pay for the wall many times over just in a period of a year, two years, or three years. So I view that as, absolutely, Mexico is paying for the wall, he claimed.

The White House has not provided any economic analysis to back up Trumps claims, despite weeks of queries from HuffPost.

Outside economists and trade experts, however, said the revised NAFTA which Trump has rebranded as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement will not bring into the U.S. Treasury anywhere near what is necessary to pay for a wall. Even more important: What extra money does come in will be from tariffs, which are paid by Americans, not Mexico.

Its not true, said Monica de Bolle, a trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, of Trumps claim. What it really is is American consumers paying higher prices for stuff. So its the American consumer whos paying for the wall, if you want to look at it that way. Its just total crazyland, and its only going to get worse.

Trumps untrue claim about the trade agreement was accompanied by the announcement that he may declare a national emergency and bypass Congress to build the wall.

Trump also confirmed that he told congressional leaders that the two-week-old government shutdown could last months or even more than a year if Congress doesnt give him what he wants.

I did say that. Absolutely I said that, he told reporters in a chilly Rose Garden not long after a two-hour meeting with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the minority leaders from both chambers.