USA and Mexico: Sheinbaum confronts Trump

New strategy

Now Mexico is going on the offensive against Trump

For months, Mexico has made a good face about Trump’s demands – on migration, drug smuggling and trade. Now President Claudia Sheinbaum is hitting back.

Marc Pfitzenmaier reports from Mexico City

Since Donald Trump took office, Mexico many demands Washington have to bend. Whether on the issue of migration, the fight against drug smuggling or trade relations – US President Donald Trump has so far forced one concession after another from its southern neighbor.

Although his counterpart Claudia Sheinbaum appears relatively confident on the outside, given her economic dependence on the USA so far there has been little room for negotiation. But their mantra of cooperation while preserving national sovereignty has changed. Mexico’s foreign policy is increasingly shifting into confrontation mode with Washington.

This is primarily due to an issue that connects the two countries like no other: the controversial migration policy of the USA has claimed numerous victims; people repeatedly die in the notorious deportation prisons or during operations by the immigration authority ICE, including a particularly large number of Mexicans. In early July, US officials shot dead in the state Texas a Mexican craftsman under unclear circumstances. Mexico’s president and her foreign minister then announced legal action against the USA and at the same time asked the United Nations for an investigation into the incidents by the Human Rights Commission.

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The Mexican Foreign Ministry has now filed numerous criminal complaints in the USA. Criticism and legal pressure against Washington are nothing new. But a comparable coordinated offensive with criminal charges in the USA and the involvement of the United Nations has not yet taken place in the bilateral relationship between the countries.

So far, it has primarily been US President Donald Trump who has bombarded his southern neighbor with accusations and demands: He repeatedly claimed that it was not Sheinbaum who ruled the country, but the drug cartels. That is why Washington repeatedly threatened military operations in the neighboring country and pushed behind the scenes for US security forces to be involved in operations against organized crime.

Sheinbaum vehemently rejected this and insisted on her country’s national sovereignty. Nevertheless, it had to make concessions, including the legally controversial extradition of dozens of cartel members, some of them high-ranking, the increase in its border troops by 10,000 men and high tariffs on products China. The latter measure was in response to allegations from the US that China was using Mexico as a detour into the US market to avoid Trump’s tariffs.