In its first two weeks, the second Trump administration has enacted a barrage of executive orders and holds North America on the brink of an all-out trade war. Although President Trump’s phone call with President Claudia Sheinbaum, his Mexican counterpart, put the brakes (for now) on catastrophic 25 per cent blanket tariffs, Mexico must prepare itself for a tumultuous few years ahead.
President Trump has signalled a sharp policy change on three key cross-border issues – trade, migration and drug trafficking – thereby jeopardizing the US relationship with Mexico, its first trading partner, and the future of North America as the world’s second largest trade bloc.
Trump’s stark isolationist turn and the reshaping of supply chains are upending the established global order, and will likely result in a very different geopolitical landscape a decade from now. Nevertheless, Mexico should remain fundamentally critical to US interests; something the Mexican government must remember as it chooses how to deal with Trump.
The US–Mexico trade relationship has taken on a new dimension under Trump and now has two distinct layers. The first is Trump’s threat of tariffs, which he seems to be using as a tool to extract concessions in other areas, like migration and drug trafficking. This also stems from the misunderstanding the US trade deficit with Mexico amounts to a ‘subsidy’, rather than a consumer benefit to American citizens.
The second is the traditional trade relationship, culminating in next year’s renegotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) free trade agreement (previously the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)).
Sheinbaum’s successful call with her US counterpart shows that the Mexican government has figured out a productive way to communicate with Trump. It should therefore be possible for the two countries to work together on their shared goals for migration and drugs, thereby avoiding tariffs in the future. This cooperation will also need to include a third issue that is very important for Mexico: the arms flowing south across the border into Mexico which give enormous gunpower to drug trafficking organizations.
Most importantly, Sheinbaum’s ability to pause the tariffs shows that Mexico has a strong bargaining position and will not need to capitulate entirely to Trump’s demands.
The vital next step is to properly assess the tariff threat. What sort of collaboration will ensure Mexico can keep tariffs off the table? How will cooperation efforts or success be measured? Many actions to stem drug trafficking and illegal migration to the US may take years to bear fruit – how will that factor into any decision to re-impose tariffs?
Reassuring the US government on Mexico’s unequivocal opposition to drug cartels will likely require a new level of intelligence sharing in both directions. Trump has designated the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) while declaring that Mexico’s government is in an ‘intolerable alliance’ with them.
Such unsupported claims, if taken seriously, could threaten Mexican sovereignty in several ways. Possible US actions could include extraterritorial strikes (from drones or otherwise), freezing of Mexican assets, and detention of Mexican citizens, including officials, through unauthorized and uncoordinated ground actions. Such measures must remain a red line for Mexico.
Mexico can in fact point to clear progress on efforts to combat illegal migration and drug-related security issues. On migration, Mexico’s efforts to strengthen its own southern border and increase migrant interceptions elsewhere has already resulted in significant improvements. According to US Customs and Border Protection, migrant encounters at the US–Mexico land-border plummeted by more than 60 per cent between December 2023 and December 2024 – before Trump’s inauguration.
Furthermore, Sheinbaum has signalled she will play ball with Trump’s deportation efforts. Her government has announced an ambitious and complex repatriation strategy called ‘México te abraza’, or ‘Mexico embraces you’, which aims to provide legal assistance, transport home, accommodation and cash transfers for deported Mexicans. She has also said Mexico will accept deportees from other countries.
As agreed during the presidential phone call, Mexico immediately deployed 10,000 National Guard members to the US–Mexico border.
With regards to drug-trafficking organizations, US demands give President Sheinbaum an opportunity to use her predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) as a scapegoat. AMLO’s presidency saw the most homicides (over 180,000) of any presidential term in Mexican history as he advanced his ‘hugs not bullets’ strategy.
Sheinbaum has sought a make a stark policy shift. Homicides have already fallen 16 per cent from September to December of 2024, illustrating the early impact of Sheinbaum’s course-correction. She has increased intelligence coordination between the Ministry of Security, the army and the navy, resulting in more than 10,000 new detentions and over 90 tonnes of drugs seized (including the largest fentanyl bust in history) in the first four months of her term.
In addition to Sheinbaum’s new security policy, two key factors are required to make progress on the issue of drug cartels. The first is a bilateral relationship based on trust and transparency, with wide-ranging intelligence sharing and an increase in cartel extraditions to the US. The second is recognition and action by the US on its soaring domestic drug demand and the epidemic of mass gun trafficking from the US to Mexico. Over 70 per cent of guns at Mexican crime scenes can be traced to the US, and hundreds of thousands of illegal guns cross over the border each year, based on data from both governments.