Mexico city – The government of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has a deadline of the Mexican President of Tuesday, once again takes a press that prevents President Trump from putting potentially devastating tariffs to Mexican exports into the USA.
This week she delivered a symbolic gift: the transfer to the United States of 29 suspects of drug trafficking, including Rafael Caro Quintero, the legendary co-founder of the once dominant Guadalajara cartel and alleged mastermind of the 1985 killing by Enrique Camarena, a subordinate US drug authority representative in Mexico.
Also in a dramatic illustration of cooperation with binational security in the USA were suspected drug lords, which were associated with some of the six Mexican groups for organized crime, which Trump's White House called “foreign terrorist organizations”.
Behind the closed doors in Washington, some of the cabinet ministers of Sheinbaum dealt in a different form of diplomacy in which they wanted to convince their American colleagues to ward off Trump's plan for 25% comprehensive tariff for goods from Mexico and Canada. In the meantime, Sheinbaum said that she was hoping to speak directly to the Mercurial US President.
“As you know, he has his way of communicating,” said Sheinbaum on Thursday with a smile. “But as we always say: it takes a cool head and optimism to achieve an agreement.”
Trump initially threatened to impose tariffs on February 4, but last-minute agreements were delayed per month. On Wednesday, Trump seemed to say that the tariffs would be postponed again – until April. But in a social media contribution on Thursday, Trump turned the course again and said they would come into force on March 4.
Sheinbaum, which took up his office on October 1, was praised at home because he dealt with Trump's collective bargaining threats without impairing Mexican sovereignty or alienating its nationalistic basis. A recent survey she showed with an approval of 80%.
“Instead of reacting to everything he says, she tries to demonstrate what Mexico did in the security and migration front and how important Mexico is for US competitivity,” said Pamela K. Starr, professor of international relations at USC.
“She tries to convince Trump that tariffs do not make sense” Starr added: “Since the competitiveness of Mexico's US companies and the United States' ability to bring more production home depends on its ability to work well with Mexico.”
The tariffs would probably trigger retaliation for both nations and could bring Mexico's already shaky economy into a recession, say experts. Mexico's bank expects the country's economy to grow by only 0.6% this year.
Trump's far-reaching tariff blueprint triggered the global uncertainty. But only a few countries lose more than Mexico, which sends more than 80% of its exports to the USA.
Foreign direct investments in Mexico have already dropped because the investors are exposed to the uncertainty of tariffs.
Ed Lebow, a trade lawyer from the US company Haynes and Boone, said that companies that do business with Mexico are deeply fearful.
Recently, representatives of a company that were produced there asked Lebow, whether they could avoid tariffs by forwarding their products to Guatemala before sending them to the US market. Lebow had to tell the company no – tariffs depend on where products are put together, not where they are sent.
“People reach for anything,” said Lebow about concerned business people. “Trump is never known whether it is more Brinkmanship, which is a standard technique in the negotiation or whether it is actually a sincere conviction that it is worth disturbing the entire North American economy if it does not receive the answer to fentanyl.”
At the beginning of February, Makoto Uchida, managing director of Nissan, sent shock waves through Mexico when he suggested that the Japanese car manufacturer could possibly be forced to move production elsewhere when Trump goes through his tariff plan.
In the past few months, Sheinbaum has strongly promoted the country's illegal drug trafficking and has undergone a high number of arrests in alleged human dealers and seizures of fentanyl and other illegal substances.
The transfer of 29 prisoners on Thursday was the youngest in a number of sales of alleged human dealers in a nation in which organized crime controlled large parts of the territory and dominated cross -border smuggling. According to the Ministry of Justice, up to six of the 29 refugees, including Quintero, could now be exposed to the death penalty – whom they would not be confronted in Mexico.
While the tariff period is approaching, Mexican civil servants are confident that the type of exhaustion of the 11th hour in early February Trump caused the levies to push for one month. On this occasion, Sheinbaum spoke by Trump by phone for 45 minutes and observed Mexico's progress in deterring migrants and drugs in the USA.
But on Thursday, in his post, the tariffs said that Trump incorporated the “very high and unacceptable” medicinal product – especially Fentanyl – from Mexico and Canada into our country and incorporated into our country with precursor -chemicals from China.
US officials accuse Fentanyl, especially from Mexico, for tens of thousands of deaths in recent years.
Something surprisingly, Trump's Thursday post did not mention illegal immigration – which Trump has long cited together with the drug smuggling as reasons for the imposition of sanctions against Mexico and Canada.
It was unclear whether the omission was reflected, while the recognition of steep declines of illegal immigration along the southwestern border, where the arrests of the US border patrol have decreased to their lowest number for years. The reductions, according to the officials, are mostly the result of us, which exceed both the Trump and bidet management and increased the Mexican efforts to capture and push the US migrants back.
The good news for Mexico is that, despite fluctuations in the middle of Trump, changing rhetoric has remained relatively stable – a fact that “Financial markets do not believe that Trump” will really impose tariffs.
Everything that Trump says must be taken to the nominal value. The Mexican government cannot afford to do something else.
-Gustavo Flores-Macias, government professor at Cornell University
The provision of a relaxed background for the current collective bargaining debate in Mexico is memories of previous large peso devaluation-especially of the peso crisis from 1994-95, which in the same year inflamed the North American free trade agreement (NAFTA), and opened the era of long-term trade between Mexico, the United States and Canada. The economic crisis led to a massive wave of migration to the USA
While Trump has a story in which he issued extensive threats to withdraw at the last minute, many experts say that they have to be taken seriously.
“Everything Trump says has to be taken at the nominal value,” said Gustavo Flores-Macías, professor of government at Cornell University. “The Mexican government cannot afford to do something else.”
Among Mexican officials hopes that cross-border industries are probably affected by tariffs-especially from the automotive sector-that Trump will put enough pressure on Trump's consultants to cancel the tariffs by argue that new taxes increase the prices for US consumers and slow down the US economy.
A probable scenario is that Trump could “step on the street again,” said Idelfonso Guajardo, who, as a former Minister of Mexican economy, helped negotiating the current North American trade agreement with the first Trump administration.
“I always said that Donald Trump is the most disturbing person I knew – but also the most predictable,” said Guajardo.
Times special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.