Round 2 in Trump-vs-Mexico matchup looks ominous for Mexico

MEXICO CITY (AP):

Mexico is facing a second Donald Trump presidency, and few countries can match its experience as a target of Trump’s rhetoric: There have been threats to close the border, impose tariffs and even send . forces to fight Mexican drug cartels if the country doesn’t do more to stem the flow of migrants and drugs.

That’s not to mention what mass deportations of migrants who are in the US illegally could do to remittances – the money sent home by migrants – that have become one of Mexico’s main sources of income.

But as much as this second round looks like the first round – when Mexico pacified Trump by quietly ceding to his immigration demands – circumstances have changed, and not necessarily for the better. Today, Mexico has in Claudia Sheinbaum a somewhat stern leftist ideologue as president, and Trump is not known for handling such relations well.

Back in 2019, Mexico’s then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was a charismatic, plain-spoken, folksy leader who seemed to understand Trump, because both had a transactional view of politics: You give me what I want, I’ll give you what you want. The two went on to form a chummy relationship.

More ideological than López Obrador

But while López Obrador was forged in the give-and-take politics of the often-corrupt former ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, Sheinbaum grew up in a family of leftist activists and got her political experience in radical university student movements.

“Claudia is more ideological than López Obrador, and so the problem is that I see her potentially responding to Trumpian policies, whether it’s, you know, organized crime or immigration or tariffs with a much more nationalistic, jingoistic view of the relationship,” said Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico’s former ambassador to the US from 2007 to 2013.

Sheinbaum made a point of being one of the first world leaders to call Trump on Thursday to congratulate him after the election, but during the call Trump did two things that may say a lot about how things will go.

First, Sheinbaum said, Trump quickly brought up the border to remind her there were issues there. Then he asked Sheinbaum to send his greetings to López Obrador, with whom Trump said he had “a very good relationship”. That might suggest that Trump believes that López Obrador – the new president’s political mentor – is still in charge, a view shared by some analysts.

Sarukhan said he believes the fact that Sheinbaum is a woman and is from Mexico will be “a very important challenge, an issue out there as both of them get going in their relationship.”

There’s little likelihood that Trump will get caught up in other issues and just forget about Mexico. Karoline Leavitt, the Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman, said Trump had been given “a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.”

Not everything has changed for the worse: Cross-border trade has topped $800 billion per year and US companies are more dependent than ever on Mexican plants.

But the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, or USMCA, is coming up for review, and Mexico has made legal changes that Trump could seize on to demand a re-negotiation of parts of the deal.

Sheinbaum has suggested Mexico won’t give in even if backed into a corner, saying “we obviously are going to address any problems that come up with dialogue, as a collaborative process, and if not, we are going to stand up, we are prepared to do that with great unity.”

Standing up hasn’t worked particularly well before. In 2018, Marcelo Ebrard was Mexico’s top diplomat; former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Ebrard basically bent to US demands to keep asylum seekers in Mexico and accept migrants back even if they weren’t Mexicans.

Ebrard just asked that the deal not be made public to avoid embarrassing López Obrador, Pompeo wrote. (Ebrard later claimed he had avoided signing a much worse “safe third country’” agreement.)

Today, Ebrard is Mexico’s economy secretary, and would lead Mexico’s delegation in the scheduled 2026 review of the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement, something that Trump has greeted with mirth (“I’ve never seen anybody fold like that,” Trump once said of Ebrard.)

Ebrard on Thursday downplayed any risks this time around, saying economic ties between the two countries would keep Trump from closing borders or imposing tariffs.

“I am optimistic. Unlike other countries, we are the largest trading partner (of the US), so, if you put up a tariff, that will have repercussions in the United States,” Ebrard said. “I’m not saying it is going to be easy, because it is not at all easy, but the relationship with President Trump will be good because, what unites us? These numbers, this gigantic economy.”