Mexico's president talks back to Trump – without antagonizing him
Sheinbaum comes across as the adult in the room and addles the anti-Trump resistance. But she quietly agrees with Trump’s demands, while using her morning press conference to successfully save face.
A version of this story ran in The Mexico Brief
President Claudia Sheinbaum returned to a frequent topic of attention last week: the Gulf of Mexico – rechristened Gulf of America earlier this month by US President Donald Trump. Sheinbaum targeted Google, saying Mexico would sue the tech giant if its maps continued reading “Gulf of America.”
“It’s a matter of sovereignty and recognition of our country against a private company, even if it is a private platform, there are international standards for how it is named,” she said at a press conference.
The response to Google continued Sheinbaum’s communications pattern in replying to Trump’s actions: deploying the sovereignty discourse, avoiding direct criticism of Trump and blaming or criticizing someone or something other than the US president. The pattern also involves striking a nationalist tone, pointing out US shortcomings or doggedly disagreeing with Trump on minor points – addling the anti-Trump resistance – and always ending with a sober call for dialogue and an offer of cooperation. Much like Trump and other populists, Sheinbaum indulges distractions such as the “Gulf of America” and picking fights with media outlets – especially The New York Times.
Sheinbaum turned to the same playbook as Google with a far graver issue for Mexico: The US designating drug cartels as foreign terror organizations (FTOs).
“The people of Mexico, under no circumstances will accept interventions, interference or any other act from abroad that is harmful to the integrity, independence and sovereignty of the nation,” Sheinbaum said Thursday, assuming a familiar rhetorical flourish of nationalism.
She proposed a pair of constitutional amendments in response to the FTO designation. One of the amendments bans the foreign agents from carrying out investigations or pursuing suspects without Mexican permission. The other proposes tougher penalties and pre-trial (preventive) detention for anyone involved in weapons trafficking.
“We don’t negotiate sovereignty. As I said, this cannot be an opportunity for the United States to invade our sovereignty, so they can call it whatever they want, but with Mexico, it’s collaboration and coordination, never subordination, not interference and much less invasion,” she said.
Talking tough with Trump?
Sheinbaum’s communications have drawn acclaim at home and abroad – and even been held up as an example for dealing with Trump. She’s stuck by the maxim of keeping a “cool head,” while deploying moments of levity – such as her initial response to the Gulf of America, when she showcased an old map demarcating Mexican America for territory now part of the United States.
The strategy appears to be working with Trump, too, though it’s been accompanied by plenty of actions to placate the US president
Sheinbaum defused Trump’s planned tariffs in early February after a lengthy conservation with the US president in which she proposed sending 10,000 national guard members to the northern border. It was a rerun of 2019, when Trump got her predecessor to send the national guard to the northern and southern borders. And, unlike her Canadian counterpart, she held off on announcing retaliatory measures, though she expressed indignation over the accusation of there being a drug cartel alliance and – as she’s done repeatedly – criticized U.S. guns coming into Mexico and spoke unflatteringly of U.S. society.
“Trump liked her toughness, but at the same time she played ball,” The Wall Street Journal cited sources saying of her. “Troop deployment is something that Trump loves,” one Mexican official said, according to WSJ.
Praise for Sheinbaum, scorn for Trudeau
Trump and his team have had positive comments for Sheinbaum. He told reporters:
“President Sheinbaum is a woman I like very much. We’ve had good relationships, but we have to stop fentanyl from coming in whether I like somebody or not. We have to stop the illegal aliens.”
His comments for her have been warmer than his scorn for outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who Trump belittles as “governor” and called “a loser” after Canada beat the US in overtime to claim the 4 Nations Face-Off hockey tournament. He’s said nothing on taking Mexican territory – an indignity the Mexicans know well after the Mexican-American War – unlike his constant talk of annexing Canada. (One has to wonder why some Canadians politicians thought they could court Trump with promises of throwing Mexico under the bus by excluding it from the continental free trade agreement.)
‘Impressed with President Sheinbaum’
Trump’s disparagement of Trudeau contrasts sharply with his team’s comments on Sheinbaum. State Department special envoy to the Americas, Mauricio Claver-Carone told the Miami Herald he was “impressed” with Sheinbaum and “the way she has worked and collaborated.”
Trump shared a positive anecdote from one of his calls with Sheinbaum at the recent National Governors’ meeting at the White House. He said in comments sent to the press by Sheinbaum’s office afterward:
“I was speaking actually to the president of Mexico saying, you can’t send the people through your country.
“And I said, you’re not a big drug taking nation. You send us plenty of drugs, but the people aren’t drug taking. And she said, yes, we’re not a consumer nation. That was a very interesting term. And I said, so why aren’t you? What are the reasons? Why is it? It’s true, Mexico, they don’t have a lot of drug problems in terms of taking the drug.
“She said, well, two things – and a lot of you could do with the second thing. He (sic) said we have very strong family values. I said, but so do we …
“So, we have strong family values also, family members and relationships, just as strong as Mexico. What the other? Well, we spend a lot of money on advertising saying how bad drugs are for you. And I said, oh, I never learned anything on phone calls. This time I learned something.”
Mexican mythologies and ‘mañanera’ talking points
Trump’s comments showed the overlap between Sheinbaum’s morning press conference talking points and their conversations.
Her predecessor, former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, (AMLO) spoke for three hours in a daily press conference known as the “mañanera” – an exercise similar to Trump’s early Twitter account in that it proved exasperating, but set the news cycle. It also became an exercise in real-time governing as the Mexican president – much like Trump – would spitball and seemingly make and announce policy on the fly. (More on the mañanera in a future newsletter.)
Sheinbaum’s line on the absence of addictions in Mexico forms part of her focusing criticism on US society rather than Trump himself. It also comes from AMLO’s mañanera. She often repeats AMLO’s fentanyl comments, asking, as AMLO did, why the US doesn’t care for its youth as Mexico supposedly does or insisting that “strong families” somehow spare Mexico the scourge of addictions.
Lost in the responses is proof. AMLO scrapped Mexico’s annual addictions survey – meaning the scope of Mexico’s fentanyl problem is largely unknown. The morgue in Mexicali, capital of Baja California, started testing for fentanyl, however. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2023 that the Mexicali morgue had found fentanyl in 23 per cent of the corpses sent there over the course of a year.
Gun scourge
Sheinbaum has raised the gun issue in the mañanera – and apparently with U.S. officials, too – though Trump has not mentioned the topic. She has complained how smuggled US weapons arm drug cartels and cause chaos in Mexico. “If there’s a place that such an [intolerable] alliance exists it’s with US gunmakers, which sell high-power weapons to these criminal groups,” Sheinbaum said after Trump announced tariffs and alleged government-cartel collusion. This week, she announced Mexico would expand its lawsuit against US gunmakers. (The US Supreme Court will hear arguments in Mexico’s gun lawsuit in early March.) Her supporters, meanwhile, questioned why US gunmakers wouldn’t be impacted by the FTO designation given how many weapons flow into Mexico.
Mexico alleges 74 per cent of the weapons used in the country, which has one legal gun store, enter illegally via its northern border. But surprisingly few weapons are actually seized by the Mexican military. An analysis from the Iberoamerican University found that the number of weapons seized had fallen precipitously over the 2010s. Soldiers seized “no more than 9,000 weapons” in 2020, while in 2011, 38,547 weapons were seized.”
The gun issue appears to be on the bilateral agenda, however, as Sheinbaum said in her statement on X after reaching a deal to postpone US tariffs. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the president’s statement on a recent podcast:
“We’re going to work together them on their side of the border, us on our side of the border, so we can take care of their, you know, their running, gun running problem, and they can help take care of the fentanyl problem and the mass migration problem and the cartel problem.”
Simpler bilateral relationship?
Sheinbaum also said in her statement announcing a 30-day pause in tariffs that Mexico and the US would form teams working on two fronts: security and commerce. In effect, the two sides simplified the bilateral relationship. They also reverted to the not disimilar arrangement that AMLO had with Trump: the two populist presidents focused on trade and migration to the exclusion of most other issues. The arrangement appeared to revert to the old preference in Mexico (and the State Department) for keeping bilateral issues separate (e.g. trade wasn’t mixed with migration). Rubio confirmed the new arrangement, saying:
“That situation is broken up into two pieces. One is tariffs, and … the treasury and commerce (secretaries) are going to be handling that. … They’re interrelated, but they’re separate topics. And then I’m working with Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem on the security piece of it.”
FTO designation
Along with avoiding tariffs, Sheinbaum has most vociferously objected to the FTO designation.
Mexican governments of all stripe have long opposed the FTO designation. Analysts say it complicates doing business. Companies often pay extortion in areas controlled by drug cartels, meaning such payments, “even if made under duress, could be considered ‘material support’ to terrorist organizations,” according to a factsheet from FTI consulting. It also raises fears of US forces taking unilateral action in Mexico against drug cartel targets.
But it reflects US perceptions of inaction on crime during the AMLO administration with his stated security policy of “hugs, not bullets.” Security analyst Eduardo Guerrero said of perceptions on a recent podcast
“There’s a perception, not far from reality [that] the Mexican government has been very passive, very complacent and very reluctant to take risks and confront organized crime,”
Abandoning ‘hugs, not bullets?’
Sheinbaum speaks in nationalistic bromides at her morning press conference. “Mexico doesn’t negotiate the national sovereignty,” she said after announcing the constitutional amendments in response to the FTO designation.
But Sheinbaum appears to have quietly abandoned “hugs, not bullets.” The federal government has returned to providing details on dismantling synthetic drug labs and arrest numbers. American troops also received permission to enter Mexico to train Navy marines.
The defence of Mexico’s sovereignty also seems to have its limits. CNN and The New York Times reported that drones have flown over Mexico, spying on drug cartels. Other spy aircraft have also flown missions near Mexican territory such as an Air Force RC-135 over the Sea of Cortes – off the coast of Sinaloa.
Sheinbaum downplayed the drone flights, saying there was nothing illegal and described it as being in coordination with the US. She turned conspiratorial, however, taking a page from her predecessor and questioning why the Times was reporting on the matter. “It’s because they want to undermine us, as if we were negotiating national sovereignty,” she claimed.
Some Trump administration officials seem anxious to take the fight to the cartels, however. “The cartels are on notice,” national security advisor Mike Waltz said at CPAC. “We are going to unleash holy hell on the cartels. Enough is enough.” But his comments quickly returned to the border and the “joint patrols” the Mexican army is doing with US border officials.
The president’s discourse is skillfully rallying the Mexican population, while animating Trump’s opponents – without antagonizing Trump. She comes across as the adult in the room. But her discourse betrays the difficult hand she’s been dealt: Sheinbaum quietly agrees with Trump’s demands, while using the morning press conference to successfully save face. It seems to be working.