Mexico city – She was unshakable when President Trump fired broad sides – threats, devastating tariffs, mass shifts and even a military campaign against what he described as a “unbearable alliance” between the Mexican government and organized crimes.
“Keep a cool head,” says Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
It is not an easy task to appease the Mercurial US president, while a nationalist basis is hypersensively interfere with us. But she switched it off.
Last month, she managed to persuade Trump on the edge of a trade war on the edge of a trade war to convince Trump to delay the imposition of tariffs. After that, Trump said that he had “a great conversation with Mexico” and called Sheinbaum “a woman that I like very much”.
Her constant hand has calmed down the nerve markets and increased its popularity at home, where it has the approval ratings of around 75%.
The impending question is how long your success can take.
Trump has set a new deadline for the introduction of 25% tariffs for all imports from Mexico and Canada, which could be catastrophic for a precarious Mexican economy that depends heavily on cross-border trade.
It could be a make-or break moment for Sheinbaum, which is less than five months in her six-year term than Mexican President's first female president.
On Monday, she trumped the planned visits to Washington this week about her economic and security minister as a potential breakthrough.
President Trump goes from the Oval Office in Washington on February 14, 2025 to rise Marine One.
(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)
“We hope that this week we can reach the agreement we hope for,” said Sheinbaum.
In his conversations with Washington, Mexico pursues a two-front when long-standing cross-border supply chains collapse.
“It is common sense: don't shoot yourself into your foot,” said Marcelo Ebrard, Mexican Economic Minister and a key figure in the tariff discussions with Washington, recently reporters. “Don't destroy what we have built in the past 40 years.”
How can Mexico do enough to satisfy his demands, to satisfy migrants and fentanyl when he entered the United States illegally?
Experts say that the complete smuggling would be impossible. And the white house has not provided metrics – such as B. goals for migrants or drug attacks -to measure success or failure.
But Mexico can quote some positive trends.
The illegal border crossings have dropped to the lowest level since 2017, some due to the increased Mexican efforts and a series of US processes that started late in the bidges. According to Mexico, arrests have increased by alleged drug dealers and seizures of fentanyl, since Sheinbaum started the Mexico's own campaign against the synthetic opioid.
It is a strong contrast to the actions of Sheinbaum's predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who for months contained the existence of secret Mexican laboratories of the secret Mexican laboratory, which performed fentanyl, and which recorded a security policy that emphasized the fighting of poverty over Bloody cartel trust .
But will tons of data to make seizures and arrests a big difference?
“Trump does not read reports (Drug Enforcement Administration) that he does not read Excel Calculations,” said John D. Feeley, a former ambassador to Panama and former deputy chief of mission in the US message in Mexico town. “But what Trump lives for and what his metric is, as we all know, is a heading or a social tweet.”
Sheinbaum seems to understand that.
After announcing a one-month recovery of Trump's tariff threats, she pulled a page from his game book: she led the use of 10,000 additional national guard to the United States. TV cameras documented the troops that patrolled along the fence. The white house took up.
“There is an element of theater” with Trump, said Arturo Rocha, former high -ranking migration officer in the Mexican government. “He tries to communicate that he managed to achieve a great deal, the best possible offer. So it would be itself to expose this idea. “
America always wins in Trump's world. The setbacks are rejected in the memory hole, such as its first-time period, that Mexico would pay for the border wall.
Since Trump was elected in November, Sheinbaum, a scientist of training, has been in “the most difficult positions,” said Renata Segura, program director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the international crisis group.
“She managed to be this very, very thin line between pragmatic and not to work in a massive fight with Trump – from which she knows that it would be terrible for Mexico – but also not quite in line”, ” said Segura.
Sheinbaum presented her dealings with Trump as a conversations between the same, in which Mexico can also ask us about his problems – his organized crime networks, his insatiable appetite for illegal drugs and her failure to prevent weapons from crossing the border to Mexico in order to cross to arm the cartels.
“She managed to frame this so that the Mexicans see that she defends her interests without donating more conflicts,” said Segura.
One of Sheinbaum's mottos: “Cooperation, coordination, without subordination. … sovereignty is not negotiable. “
When the deadline approaches March 4, many more pictures of Takedowns from Drug Laborers and arrests from smugglers await.
Mexico also increases his efforts to convince Trump that tariffs and car manufacturers such as Ford and General Motors with large, long -term operations in Mexico would close. Ebrard, the Mexican Minister of Economic Affairs, visited Detroit last month to receive support.
“You have to bring all cross-border manufacturers together, all cross-border automotive managers,” said Feeley, the former US diplomat. “You get them together and let them say: 'It's time to take away the keys from grandpa because he will bring the car to crash.' “
Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.