Protesters brought a Trump piñata to protests at the border wall in Playas de Tijuana, Mexico, on Jan. 19, the day before the President's inauguration. For weeks, he had threatened new U.S. tariffs against Mexico and mass deportations from the United States.GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP via Getty Images
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is appealing to patriotism and national pride as a trade war looms, with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening 25 per cent tariffs on Mexican and Canadian exports as early as Feb. 1 – and the two neighbouring countries prepare retaliatory tariffs.
Mr. Trump’s tariff threats have stoked disquiet and political discord in Canada as the country struggles to find a unified response. Mexico, in comparison, has seemed outwardly nonplussed as Mr. Trump begins his second administration, having survived his previous threats to end continental free trade, build a border wall (with Mexico paying) and deport undocumented Mexican migrants living north of the border.
Ms. Sheinbaum said Wednesday she doesn’t believe the United States will impose tariffs on Saturday after the White House doubled down on Mr. Trump’s promise to do so.
President Claudia Sheinbaum has brushed off Mr. Trump's rhetoric, and trolled back with gestures such as this 'Mexican America' map, made in response to a GOP proposal to rename the Gulf of Mexico.ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP via Getty Images
She has called for calm and dialogue as she oversees a government acting to placate Mr. Trump on trade, immigration enforcement and public security. She also has called for unity – much like then-president Enrique Peña Nieto did in 2016 after Mr. Trump’s unexpected election. But unlike the reviled Mr. Peña Nieto, Ms. Sheinbaum boasts an approval rating of 78 per cent and increasingly has support crossing party lines, according to Alejandro Moreno, director of polling for the newspaper El Financiero.
She speaks for the country, though often in bromides meant as much for internal consumption as for Mr. Trump’s. “Mexico is respected,” and, “Mexico isn’t a colony,” she often says. “It’s wrapping yourself in the flag and talking about how sovereign you are,” Andrés Rozental, a Mexican former deputy foreign minister and consultant, said of the President’s communications. “The government has minimized this situation as much as it possibly can.”
The patriotic discourse comes as Mexico takes steps to pacify the Trump administration – and the Biden administration before it. Mexico has stepped up migration enforcement over the past 13 months, decommissioned increasingly more fentanyl labs, announced plans for substituting Chinese imports and accepted the reimplementation of the Remain in Mexico program, in which asylum seekers wait in Mexico while their cases are heard in U.S. courts.
The country has received more than 4,000 deportees during Mr. Trump’s first week in office and is being pressured to accept non-Mexicans. Public security secretary Omar García Harfuch announced the seizure of more than 100 tonnes of drugs and nearly 10,000 arrests for high-impact crimes since Ms. Sheinbaum took office Oct. 1.
Ms. Sheinbaum’s discourse can be polarizing, however. The President routinely slaps down dissonant voices, while portraying the country’s disorganized opposition as unpatriotic. “Some people in the opposition are celebrating that there’s intervention,” she said in response to an opposition lawmaker voicing support for Mr. Trump taking on drug cartels through the foreign terror designation. “That’s treason.”
The political opposition and private sectors have largely kept their comments in check. Some business leaders have tried appealing to Trump with talk of investments – but never crossing Ms. Sheinbaum or talking out of turn.
Ms. Sheinbaum’s “popularity and political capital” give her sway within the federal government as well as state governments, said Diego Marroquín Bitar, the Bersin-Foster North America scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center. “Trump getting more aggressive also helps feed her base.”
Ms. Sheinbaum, whose supporters marked her 100th day in office earlier this month, is urging Mexicans to stay united as the Trump administration takes hold in Washington.RODRIGO OROPEZA/AFP via Getty Images
Ms. Sheinbaum dominates the national discourse through a lengthy daily news conference during which she addresses the nation in dry but reassuring tones. But it’s proven effective for both Ms. Sheinbaum and her predecessor and mentor, former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, as it sets the news cycle, and pro-government influencers repeat the content on social media.
“She’s not charismatic,” said Ilán Semo, history professor at the Iberoamerican University. But “she’s professional, does things properly and inspires a lot of confidence,” he continued. “She’s really won people’s trust.”
To be sure, polls consistently show Mexican antipathy for Mr. Trump; a November survey by El Financiero found 67 per cent of Mexicans disliked the U.S. President. But another El Financiero poll found Mexicans optimistic for 2025. Sixty-six per cent of respondents said they expected 2025 to be better economically than the previous year – up from the 49 per cent who said the same about 2024.
Analysts attribute the optimism to Ms. Sheinbaum’s high approval rating and the populist agenda she inherited from Mr. López Obrador. That agenda includes a suite of cash stipend schemes for seniors, students and single mothers, which Ms. Sheinbaum has expanded, despite strains on the federal budget.
Challenges such as the country’s sagging economy – with Scotiabank projecting GDP to expand barely 1 per cent in 2025 – ailing health care system and rampant insecurity seemingly don’t faze the population.
“López Obrador’s government communications, which continues with Sheinbaum, has been to hide or minimize the big problems,” said Carlos Ramírez, partner at political risk consultancy Integralia. “People are not perceiving” Mr. Trump’s threats “as something big enough to change their view that the country is on the right track.”
The markets of Mexico City are bracing for disruptions in case Mr. Trump follows through on his threats, but many business leaders seem hopeful a deal with avert that.Fred Ramos/Reuters
Analysts say the tariff threats deeply unsettle the business sector. But they say the sector clings to the view that Mr. Trump will want to make a deal on tariffs.
“They’re not understanding that Trump 1.0 is very different from Trump 2.0,” and “that there is a growing sense that the U.S. can pull off nearshoring and the reindustrialization” of strategic sectors, said Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador in Washington. “I think the Mexican government and the Mexican private sector have been very blasé about the possibility of this really materializing.”
On the eve of Mr. Trumps inauguration, Ms. Sheinbaum said, “When president López Obrador was in power, a good understanding was reached with President Trump and that is why I think that we will reach a good understanding. We will understand each other.”
Mr. López Obrador forged an unlikely relationship with Mr. Trump: a pair of populists, who practised similar anti-elite politics, dealt in conspiracies and picked fights with the media.
The presidents effectively shrunk the bilateral agenda to the two issues animating Mr. Trump: trade and immigration, according to Martha Bárcena, Mexican ambassador in Washington from 2018 to 2021. In exchange, Mr. López Obrador was largely left alone. But Mr. Trump is pursuing a broader binational agenda this time around.
“I don’t think they realize how much the U.S. has changed,” Ms. Bárcena said of Ms. Sheinbaum’s administration. The attitude has been that “we know how to deal with Trump, nothing will happen, these are only campaign promises.”
The Mexican National Guard patrols the border for criminal activity, but is also seeing more military personnel on the U.S. side, and new measures to punish cartels.Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters
Mr. Trump’s expanded bilateral relationship includes the foreign terror organization designation for drug cartels, which Mexico has long opposed. Ms. Sheinbaum’s supporters – not prone to criticizing Mr. Trump – vociferously opposed the designation, taking to social media to call U.S. gun makers terrorists for allowing weapons to enter Mexico and arm drug cartels.
Security analysts say the designation potentially complicates investment. Drug cartels routinely extort businesses in Mexico, meaning payments, “even if made under duress, could be considered ‘material support’ to terrorist organizations,” according to a fact sheet from FTI Consulting. There’s unease over talk in Republican circles of unilateral military intervention. “Stranger things have happened,” Mr. Trump responded when asked about intervening in Mexico.
The designation, however, comes amid perceptions in parts of Washington that Mexico had been “turning a blind eye” to drug cartel violence, Mr. Sarukhan said. “It’s the failings and mistakes of Mexico’s internal policies which create these vulnerabilities in the relationship with the United States.”
GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP via Getty Images
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