Mexico was plagued by the worst when President Trump threatened sudden tariffs on exports. But as the deadline approaches, Mexican leaders hope to find a formula to quell tariffs by crucially moving several fronts to appease Trump.
Focusing on Trump's immigration and complaints about illegal drugs, President Claudia Sheinbaum builds on his efforts to deploy 10,000 troops to stop immigrants from reaching the United States and divide immigrant caravans and buses into places far from the border.
Sinbaum has also been handed over to the US to dozens of top cartel operatives, embracing intelligence from CIA drone flights to capture others. Invade her predecessor who falsely claims that Mexico has not produced fentanyl, she unleashes the crackdown, resulting in a record-breaking seizure of the drug.
At the same time, Mexican leaders are imposing their own tariffs and restrictions on a wide range of Chinese imports, trying to convince Trump that Mexico and its low-cost industrial bases will become strategic partners that will slow China's economic turmoil.
Trump is still vowing to impose a 25% tariff on Tuesday. However, Mexican financial markets remain calm, reflecting the country's expectations for business facilities that Sinbaum can find a way to launch a deal.
“The way she managed this crisis is far superior to any other leader,” said Diego Marrokin Bittal, a scholar specializing in North American trade at the Wilson Center, a Washington research group.
After speaking to her in February, Trump praised Sinbaum as a “great woman.”
Sinbaum has mixed her reconciliatory public moves to appease Trump, including deploying Trump, and there is a modest pushback to Trump against subjects such as greater security cooperation behind the scenes, as well as changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico.
Despite her approval ratings skyrocketing to 80%, it's not an easy balance for Sinbaum. Trump's xenophobic politics skepticism flows deeply in both Mexican society and Morena, Sinbaum's political party that fuses nationalist and leftist ideals.
After decades of integration, Mexico relies more on trade with the US than any other major economy. Economists warn that even if they are temporarily imposed, they could be hit.
Trump is also threatening a 25% tariff on global steel and aluminum imports, which will affect Mexico as well. And the Trump administration is developing additional “mutual” tariffs aimed at offsetting trade restrictions and matching import obligations charged by other countries.
Uncertainty about tariffs has already placed emphasis on Mexico's economy as businesses put plans on hold. The central bank has reduced its growth forecast to 0.6% from 1.2% this year.
Still, Trump's repeated threats and subsequent pullbacks to these threats have nurtured hope that tensions could be eased. He initially vowed to impose tariffs on his first day in office, but then backtracked twice.
The Mexican negotiator is in Washington to meet with US trade representative, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, to meet to reach last minute deals.
Here are three areas that Mexico is mobilizing to match the Trump administration's priorities.
Suppressing migration
The Mexican pledge to send 10,000 additional national guards to the US border was cited as a victory in early February when Trump suspended a 30-day assignment.
For months, Mexico had already demolished its immigrant caravan quite a bit before it reached the border city, expanding its shadow program that transported thousands of migrants deep inside Mexico.
According to government figures, Mexico detained about 475,000 migrants in the last quarter of 2024, more than twice the amount detained in the first nine months of that year.
The border was already very quiet before Trump took office in January, reflecting Mexico's enforcement measures and Biden's administration's asylum restrictions.
Along with the deployment of Mexican military forces, the Trump administration's new efforts to suffocate the flow of immigrants, making it even more difficult for immigrants to enter the United States.
The intersection of immigration has dropped to levels that were unthinkable. At one point in February, US officials at the Mexican border encountered just 200 immigrants in a single day, the lowest in recent history.
If this trend continues on an annual basis, it could lower Border Patrol concerns to levels last seen nearly 60 years ago around the end of the Johnson administration, according to Adam Isaxon, an immigration expert at the Washington office in Latin America.
Mexico has tried to crack down on cartels that produce illegal drugs, particularly fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that Trump cited as the leading cause of overdose deaths in the United States.
Mexican officials have regularly announced new attacks of fentanyl tablets in recent weeks as marking breaks from past policies and when the cartels produced fentanyl with interference that could neglect the interference from authorities.
These moves include last week's capture of 6 kilograms of fentanyl at Mexico City's New International Airport, and packages sent to New Jersey. It followed the discovery of 18 kilograms of fentanyl hidden in a passenger bus in the northwest border state of Sonora.
Shortly after Trump began threatening Mexico with tariffs in December, authorities carried out a massive seizing of 800 kilograms of fentanyl in Sinaloa, the largest capture of Mexico's synthetic opioids.
In February, Mexican authorities in Puerto Vallarta also arrested two American citizens who faced an arrest warrant in the United States for fentanyl trafficking. Both were handed over to Oklahoma.
Mexico sent nearly 30 cartel operatives that U.S. authorities had hoped for to the United States on Thursday, one of the biggest handshakes in the history of the drug war.
The move aims to both avoid tariffs and military intervention by the US that Trump threatened to oppose drug cartels operating in Mexico.
Sinbaum's leader and predecessor as president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, had limited anti-drug cooperation with the United States. It appears that Sinbaum is taking a different approach.
For example, Mexican officials have welcomed intelligence from the CIA, which has strengthened secret drone flights through Mexico to hunt fentanyl labs. The Mexican defense minister said in late February that US drones were used to track figures from Sinaloa's top cartels.
Larger enforcement could potentially contribute to a reduction in overdose deaths in the already declining US.
Overdose deaths fell by about 24% in the 12 months ended in September 2024, as they could be a promising sign for Mexican negotiators seeking a customs contract.
Countering China
Trade between China and Mexico has been rising rapidly, fostering concerns that China could use its foothold in Mexico to increase access to the US market. A year ago, shipping from China to Mexico was one of the fastest growing trade routes in the world.
But now Mexico is overhauling its relationship with China, the second largest trading partner. A few days after Trump first vowed to impose tariffs, authorities stormed a vast complex in downtown Mexico City selling counterfeit Chinese goods.
Mexico then imposed a 35% tariff on Chinese apparel imports, but targeted Chinese online retailers such as Shein and Temu by implementing a 19% tariff on goods imported through delivery companies imported from China.
Still, with various tariff threats on the horizon, Mexico can appease the Trump administration by curbing the imports of products such as semiconductors and automobiles.
