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Mexico-U.S. Issues during Sheinbaum’s First Year

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By Marcia Chaiken and Jan Chaiken

During Claudia Sheinbaum’s first months as president, relations with the U.S. administration were relatively calm. Joe Biden, having stepped aside from a second presidential run, was focused on preserving his legacy of rebuilding cooperative international relationships. Soon after Mexico’s election, Biden issued an official statement:

“I congratulate Claudia Sheinbaum on her historic election as the first woman President of Mexico. I look forward to working closely with President-elect Sheinbaum in the spirit of partnership and friendship that reflects the enduring bonds between our two countries. I express our commitment to advancing the values and interests of both our nations to the benefit of our peoples.”

Even before taking office, Sheinbaum responded warmly, making clear she looked forward to working with Biden until the end of his term. She noted she would be glad to work with another woman president—hinting at Kamala Harris—but emphasized that it was for U.S. voters to decide, and that she would cooperate with whoever was elected.

Biden did not attend Sheinbaum’s inauguration but sent a Presidential Delegation led by First Lady Jill Biden, joined by U.S. officials with close family ties to Mexico. For a moment, things seemed smooth. But only weeks after Sheinbaum took office, the U.S. electorate chose Donald Trump—who had launched his first campaign eight years earlier by declaring that Mexico was sending “drug dealers, criminals, and rapists.” Sheinbaum must have known that the smooth sailing under Biden was about to give way to rougher seas.

Trump’s belligerence toward Latin America was on display immediately—in his inauguration speech and in a flurry of executive orders. These included militarizing the U.S. border with Mexico and even renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” Sheinbaum met these provocations with calm and humor, suggesting tongue-in-cheek that perhaps the U.S. should rename itself “Mexican America.”

As expected from Trump’s campaign rhetoric and the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” three issues dominated: mass deportations and immigration barriers, high tariffs on imports, and the threat of military action against cartels.

By September 2025, Sheinbaum had held 14 substantive conversations with Trump. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio even praised her in Mexico City for raising the level of cooperation between the two countries beyond what the U.S. had achieved with any other democracy.

Drug Interdiction
Early on, Trump reportedly asked Sheinbaum in a phone call whether Mexico had a “drug problem.” She responded that Mexico was not a drug-consuming country, crediting an intensive public campaign that graphically depicted the physical effects of drug use. Trump, who often boasts of his intelligence, admitted he had learned something and ordered a similar campaign in the U.S.

But while Mexico emphasized prevention, Trump cut funding for treatment programs, turning instead to military interdiction. In September, the U.S. destroyed a ship from Venezuela allegedly carrying illicit drugs. Trump also “offered” to send U.S. troops into Mexico to fight cartels—an offer Sheinbaum firmly rejected, calling such an invasion a hostile act.

Still, she welcomed cooperation similar to U.S. support for Colombia in the 1990s, and unlike her mentor AMLO, she has not relied on the slogan “hugs, not bullets.” To meet Trump’s demands without ceding sovereignty, she extradited scores of cartel members to the U.S. for prosecution. More importantly, she reframed the problem: not just drugs flowing north, but also guns flowing south—making clear that both are matters of shared security.

Immigration and the Border
Discussions of border control began even before Trump’s inauguration. Sheinbaum benefited from AMLO’s earlier crackdown, which had already reduced illegal crossings. After one early “perfect phone call,” Trump declared that Sheinbaum had agreed to “close down the border.” She clarified that Mexico’s strategy was to deter migrant caravans while keeping the border open to legitimate traffic.

In September, after meetings between Secretary Rubio and his Mexican counterpart, both nations announced a joint plan: U.S. and Mexican law enforcement would share intelligence and operations—each on their own side—to destroy tunnels used for smuggling drugs north and guns south.

But Trump’s mass deportation initiative looms larger. While he promised to deport only undocumented criminals, ICE sweeps have targeted day laborers, college campuses, and communities with long-standing Latino residents. Even DACA youth—brought to the U.S. as children and promised protection—are under threat.

Anticipating Trump’s actions, Sheinbaum launched the México Te Abraza (Mexico Embraces You) program on the day he took office. Along the border, centers now provide deportees with financial aid, help opening bank accounts, documentation, pensions, scholarships, disability support, and immediate essentials such as food and internet access. As Gandhi said, “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” By this measure, Sheinbaum has placed Mexico in stark contrast to Trump’s America.

Tariffs
Trump also revived the long-abandoned strategy of imposing sweeping tariffs. By mid-summer, Canada faced a 35% tariff. Mexico, however, thanks to Sheinbaum’s calm but firm negotiating style, secured a 90-day pause to seek alternatives that would not raise prices for consumers on either side of the border.

This pause proved critical. Equal tariffs on Mexico would have caused food inflation and hardship for vulnerable populations in both nations. In September, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled that Trump had overstepped his authority by justifying tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The court allowed existing tariffs to remain until October 14 while the issue heads to the Supreme Court in November.

If SCOTUS upholds the ruling, Sheinbaum can turn to other priorities. If not, she will again face Trump at the negotiating table—armed with patience, pragmatism, and her trademark humor.

Domestic Standing
At home, Sheinbaum’s approval ratings remain strong: 79% as of August 2025, twelve points higher than AMLO at the same stage, and far above Trump’s 41% in the U.S. Yet when asked specifically about her dealings with Trump, 57% of Mexicans said “bad” or “very bad.” That reflects not her performance but the disruptive impact of Trump’s policies—especially the decline in remittances from Mexicans in the U.S., which have fallen as deportations and workplace raids intensify.

Families across Mexico feel these changes directly in household income. What many may not see is that compared with other world leaders, Sheinbaum has managed to secure far more productive outcomes in her dealings with U.S., without losing Mexico’s dignity or independence.

2020

What Happened with NAFTA?

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By Jan Chaiken and Marcia Chaiken

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect in 1994 and effectively made the US, Mexico, and Canada into a single trading zone without tariffs for many products, or lower tariffs than applied to other trading partners. While the treaty was originally envisioned as a mechanism for creating new employment opportunities and enhancing working conditions and standards, its main impacts were an enormous increase in the amount of goods traded among the three nations and a sudden spurt of Mexican nationals moving to the US for employment (a migration that ended after a few years but left a large residue of Mexican citizens living and working in the US). NAFTA also stimulated the creation of entirely new methods of production between the US and Mexico. US companies export intermediate components to manufacturing companies in Mexico, which assemble the finished product and export it back to the US. As a result, now over 40% of the content of goods imported into the US from Mexico is of US origin. This form of cooperation has helped make US businesses more globally competitive,

Even before he was elected president, Donald Trump declared NAFTA to be the worst trade deal ever made, and after he took office, he initiated renegotiation of the treaty. A revised treaty was signed by the presidents of the US and Mexico and the prime minister of Canada on November 30, 2018, a date chosen specifically because the next president of Mexico, an outspoken opponent of NAFTA, took office the following day. In addition, the Democratic party had already been elected to a majority in the US House of Representatives, but the new members had not yet assumed power to assert their objections to the treaty. This effort by the signers to nail down a new treaty in the face of obvious forthcoming impediments did not succeed, and eventually the trade negotiators returned to the bargaining table. The revised version of the new treaty was ratified by the Senate of Mexico in December 2019 and by the US Congress and President by the end of January 2020. Canada waited for the other parties to act on revisions, and now the ratification process has begun in Canada but may take several months more. The new treaty will take effect 90 days after all three countries have ratified it.
The renegotiated treaty is called USMCA in the United States and T-MEC in Mexico. (The government of Mexico always invents more pronounceable acronyms!.) All told, what are the changes? Despite the bombast and rhetoric that arose from interested parties, the new treaty is remarkably similar to NAFTA. The main effect of enacting a new treaty is to end uncertainty as to whether there will be any treaty at all going into the future – if NAFTA had been simply terminated, the normal operations of many companies would have been thrown into substantial chaos.

Among its changes are a requirement that more components for vehicles be produced in the three countries in order to avoid tariffs, and a provision that 40% of each vehicle must eventually be produced by workers who earn at least $16 US per hour (about 3 times as much as is currently paid to the average Mexican factory worker). Trump has touted this provision as necessarily returning more automobile production to the United States and a subsequent increase in jobs for Americans. But if average wages for Mexican auto workers go up by increasing the salaries of industry administrators, low paid jobs will remain in Mexico and prices for U.S. cars and trucks will noticeably rise.

The treaty also gives US dairy farmers access to a larger proportion of the Canadian dairy market than in the past. In particular, more American cheese, milk and butter can be sold in Canada. Correspondingly US consumers will have access to more Canadian dairy products. Canadian sugar can also be marketed in the U.S.

Perhaps ironically, the most sweeping changes in the new NAFTA were proposed, not by the Trump administration but by Democrats in the US Congress. These included provisions related to new labor laws in Mexico that will allow Mexican workers to form independent unions, prevent forced labor, and have increased control of their contracts. The final USMCA treaty includes benchmarks and inspection protocols that will allow enforcement of the labor provisions. Other late changes to the treaty protect the environment by preventing outsourcing of pollution and related jobs to Mexico, but no specific benchmarks for controlling climate change were included in the renegotiated treaty. The Democrats also won a concession from Trump with a provision change that prevents large drug companies from retaining the rights to a class of extremely expensive pharmaceuticals for ten years and from obstructing the sale of equally effective generic forms of the drugs.

One of Mexico’s main original goals in negotiating a new trade agreement was to update and modernize the list of products so as to include ones that didn’t exist when NAFTA went into effect or that had changed substantially in their nomenclature or mode of manufacture or distribution since 1994. The text of the new treaty covers a variety of digital products and intellectual property rights that were not previously included.

Although the ratification of the new NAFTA provides more certainty in the Mexican, American, and Canadian markets, true to his style of governing by chaos, Trump inserted a sunset provision in the treaty. Any one of the three partner countries can pull out of the treaty six years after all have signed and, after a substantial delay, leave the trading partnership. But, by then, the Trump administration will be over, gone; it is hoped that North America and the rest of the world will be back on track to improving global prosperity rather than serving strictly corporate interests.