The phrase “El que se enoja, pierde,” (“he who gets angry, loses”) is a popular refrain in Mexico.
It’s an adage Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum may have had in mind the past few weeks, as she successfully maneuvered around several standoffs with the United States.
The latest was on Monday when US President Donald Trump was due to announce tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the US, impacting her country among others.
Speaking to reporters at her daily morning briefing, she repeated what has become her mantra for the Trump administration: “As I said before, (we have to keep a) cool head on this,” she said.
It’s a “measured approach” that has already “paid dividends” for Mexico, according to Duncan Wood, President and CEO of the Los Angeles-based Pacific Council on International Policy, and an expert on US-Mexico relations.
The world had a preview in January of how hard it is to win a shouting match with Trump.
The Colombian government had to do a humiliating about-face that month after President Gustavo Petro blocked two American military planes carrying Colombian deportees from entering his country.
Hours after an early morning social media rant by Petro, in which, among other things, he said that “Trump is going to end the human species because of greed,” Colombian officials walked back from the brink of a damaging trade war, announcing they were going to accept returned migrants after all.
In contrast, Sheinbaum – a 62-year-old climate scientist and former Mexico City mayor who became the first female president of Mexico in October – has remained pragmatic and calm – at least publicly – to Trump’s goading.
The day after Trump’s inauguration, Sheinbaum said it was “important to keep a cool head” when she was asked to react to the American president’s first executive orders.
Those orders included renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and declaring cartels as terrorist organizations, an act that could pave the way for using American military force on Mexican soil.
Demonstrating that “cool head” principle, she responded by suggesting drily that the United States should be called “América Mexicana,” making her comments alongside a map from 1607 that used the name for what is now US territory.
When Trump threatened a 25% duty on all imports from Mexico and most from Canada last week, Sheinbaum’s administration reached an agreement with the US to pause the tariffs for a month.
And she did so with few concessions, say analysts.
When announcing a pause on tariffs, Trump said Sheinbaum had committed to sending 10,000 members of Mexico’s National Guard to patrol the border. But this was not as big a concession as Trump made it seem; Mexico has moved troops to the border several times before.
Sheinbaum, meanwhile, pointed out that the US – for the first time – had agreed to work together to prevent high-powered weapons from entering Mexico. The agreement is something her country had been seeking for years, even going as far as suing American gun manufacturers in US courts.
Sheinbaum’s successes have not gone unnoticed. Mexico’s richest man, Carlos Slim, on Monday praised her negotiations with Trump, saying he was confident that the two leaders would be able to come to an agreement that would avoid permanent tariffs.
“(Sheinbaum’s response was) very good I think. Perfect, in fact,” Slim said. “What she did was have a plan A, B, C, D. I think she had half the alphabet, no?”
Her approach to Trump has also been praised by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “The Mexican president is a smart politician,” Scholz said following a recent meeting of European leaders. “She played it cool.”
Wood, at the Pacific Council on International Policy, said Sheinbaum was more prepared than most to face the challenge of dealing with Trump.
It also appears that Sheinbaum has learned from her predecessor.
While campaigning for the presidency, Andrés Manuel López Obrador wrote a highly critical book titled “Listen up, Trump.” But, once in the presidency, López Obrador forged ties with the American president that, beyond a working relationship, were later described as a “bromance.”
“She’s got experience, and she’s seen what other leaders have done,” said Wood.
“And she’s consulting widely with Mexican society and elites to make sure that she is taking their concerns into consideration but also you know benefiting from their insights.”
One of Sheinbaum’s achievements has been seeing past Trump’s rhetoric in order to play the long game, he added.
“With a US president, a political leader like Trump, the last thing you want to do is to engage in a shouting match of any kind, and particularly in the context of such a vitally important bilateral relationship,” Wood said of Mexico, which became the United States’ top trading partner in 2023.
While Sheinbaum’s response to Trump has largely been calm, it’s been firm too. When the White House said “the government of Mexico has afforded safe havens for the cartels,” in a February 1 statement, Sheinbaum was indignant.
“We categorically reject the slander from the White House,” Sheinbaum said that same day. She fired back on X that if there’s such an alliance, it exists between US gun shops and the criminal groups.
For Wood, the relationship between these two countries has never been simple or easy, especially when Trump is in office.
“But despite the many issues and problems that there are overall, I think we have seen these two countries coming closer and closer together with just that caveat that this is very rarely a linear progression. It is two steps forward, one step back,” Wood said.
Source link : https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/12/americas/analysis-sheinbaum-mexico-trump-tariff-cool-head-intl-latam/index.html
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Publish date : 2025-02-11 22:00:00
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