Throughout his first presidential marketing campaign in 2015, Donald Trump blamed Mexico for taking US jobs whereas exporting drug traffickers and rapists. However 5 years later, he had up to date the treaty binding their economies and known as his Mexican counterpart a “great guy”.
Mexico’s enterprise leaders felt they weathered the primary Trump storm comparatively effectively. Some imagine President Claudia Sheinbaum can comply with the playbook that labored for her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador: don’t criticise Trump and provides him what he needs on migration.
However a second Trump administration poses much more severe challenges for Mexico, the largest buying and selling associate of the US. Enterprise leaders and consultants on the bilateral relationship concern that the fledgling Sheinbaum authorities just isn’t effectively positioned to navigate them.
Trump might be a extra highly effective president this time, with possible majorities in each homes of Congress, He might be decided to press a tougher discount together with his weaker southern neighbour, which is affected by drug-related violence and sluggish progress.
“Trump redoubled is much more difficult to deal with . . . he is a bully, and [Sheinbaum] is an inexperienced national politician,” stated Andrés Rozental, a former Mexican deputy international minister. “I get the impression that it’s going to be a lopsided relationship, with the Americans demanding constantly more from Mexico, and Mexico being unable to commit or even to make a major difference.”
Trump’s marketing campaign threats — blanket tariffs, inducements to US firms to convey manufacturing again dwelling, the mass deportation of round 11mn unlawful migrants and the designation of drug cartels as terrorist teams — would hit Mexico disproportionately laborious.
Round half the migrants dwelling with out papers within the US are Mexican, Mexico is dwelling to 2 of the world’s greatest and most feared drug cartels, and the nation is dependent upon the US marketplace for 83 per cent of its exports.
Trump might be one of many greatest challenges for Sheinbaum, a leftwing celebration loyalist and scientist whose tutorial background and stiff public method may hardly be extra completely different from the previous New York property tycoon’s swashbuckling previous.
Mexico’s first feminine president has stated little to date about how she plans to cope with Trump, aside from that there was “not a single reason to worry” in regards to the nations’ “good relationship”.
Her predecessor and mentor López Obrador constructed an unexpectedly sturdy private rapport with Trump. Regardless of the 2 males’s ideological variations, they shared a choice for an authoritarian populist, nationalist type of presidency and transactional diplomacy.
López Obrador deployed the military-led Nationwide Guard to dam migrant routes and agreed to take again third-country migrants as they waited for his or her US asylum claims to be heard, whereas Trump backed off on threats to shut the border, elevate tariffs and make Mexico pay for a border wall.
Underneath Joe Biden’s presidency, the connection continued alongside comparable traces, with the US avoiding public criticism of Mexico’s rampant drug violence and López Obrador’s assaults on democratic establishments, in return for co-operation on holding again the flows of migrants.
Arturo Sarukhán, a former Mexican ambassador to the US and Washington-based advisor, stated that whereas Sheinbaum would most likely be extra ideological than López Obrador, “what’s even more important is how a profoundly misogynistic man like Donald Trump will interact with the first woman president of Mexico”.
Non-public sector and foreign money traders stay eager for a repeat of the Trump-López Obrador love-in, with this week’s fall within the peso not as steep as when Trump was first elected. One senior banking government stated most of his massive Mexican purchasers wished Trump to win, hoping the Republican’s commerce battle with China would push extra US firms to speculate south of the border.
“We’re interdependent whether we like it or not,” stated Antonio Ortiz-Mena, founding father of AOM Advisors and a former diplomat. “Mexico has more savvy and more market leverage and joint production leverage than [people think].”
However endurance with Mexico has run skinny within the US capital lately, with co-operation on combating drug cartels at a current low, US firms complaining of a deteriorating enterprise local weather, and Mexico ignoring US issues a few wide-ranging overhaul of its judiciary.
Observers in Washington level out that the nation lacks highly effective associates on Capitol Hill who would assist it fend off hostile legislative strikes. Sheinbaum has but to call an envoy to the US.
“I’m not sure the situation in 2024 is the same as in 2018,” stated Martha Bárcena, Mexico’s ambassador to the US throughout the first Trump administration. “I see many more changes in US public opinion that is seeing Mexico less and less as a friend and more as a national security threat.”
The Mexican chief’s hard-left credentials are additionally unlikely to endear her to Trump. Sheinbaum didn’t deny claims from Colombian President Gustavo Petro final month that she was a former member of his now-defunct M-19 guerrilla motion throughout the Eighties and he or she lately despatched an support cargo of oil to Cuba’s communist authorities.
Trump’s “policy towards Latin America is going to be controlled by the Cuban-Americans in Florida”, stated Bárcena. “They will not be happy with Mexico giving oil to Cuba, helping [Venezuela President Nicolás] Maduro . . . that will be another very big point of friction.”
Hanging over the bilateral relationship is an impending evaluation of the US-Mexico-Canada free commerce settlement negotiated by Trump throughout his first time period.
“Trump has already linked trade and migration during his campaign, threatening to use economic leverage to restrict migrant flows through Mexico,” stated Eric Farnsworth, vice-president of the Council of the Americas enterprise foyer in Washington.
“Sheinbaum will have to decide whether to resist this approach or . . . to accommodate US priorities. With a mandated review of USMCA in 2026, the stakes are monumentally high.”
Information visualisation by Amy Borrett
