a blanket 30% tariff on all Mexican exports<\/a>\u2014tariffs that may be raised or lowered depending on how the U.S. views Mexico\u2019s actions. It\u2019s equally powerless to respond to the increasingly visible issue of territorial and maritime control in the fight against piracy, drugs, fuel theft, money laundering, and the smuggling of chemical precursors used in synthetic drug production. This effort includes detentions, seizures, financial crackdowns, and stricter controls.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe one area where the government seems most reluctant to give in is the political base of organized crime. Taking substantive, proactive steps against criminal networks inevitably points back to L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s administration and its permissive \u201chugs, not bullets\u201d policy. This is the government\u2019s pressure point: it must do more against the cartels, because doing less could trigger a full-blown political crisis. AMLO still controls the political apparatus, and any betrayal of his vision for a trans-sexennial project\u2014ideally lasting 40 years, as Senator Fern\u00e1ndez Noro\u00f1a has predicted\u2014would be seen as a betrayal of his legacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In contrast, Mexico has received little more than uncertainty from \u201cbilateral negotiations.\u201d It often seems that the more Mexico gives, the more the U.S. demands\u2014agreements reached through hard-won negotiation are then swept away with a single stroke. That\u2019s why President Sheinbaum\u2019s repeated calls for a \u201crelationship between equals\u201d amount to little more than a mantra in her morning pressers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This may be causing friction within the cabinet. A few weeks ago, rumors circulated that Juan Ram\u00f3n de la Fuente might leave the foreign ministry due to lackluster results or disagreements over the bilateral agenda. And realistically, in the midst of these competing strategies, who could deliver better results?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This leads to a broader question about these zero-sum strategies\u2014where one side\u2019s gain is the other\u2019s loss: what must Mexican negotiators do to establish stable middle ground between both positions? They have two options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first is to stick with the current approach of conceding to the MAGA agenda. That would involve handing over politicians and business figures who have directly or indirectly enabled the expansion of drug cartels in the U.S. market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second option is to wrap themselves in the national flag and amplify the nationalist rhetoric that President Sheinbaum is increasingly using\u2014or at least to encourage symbolic acts. After all, Mexico is a country steeped in symbols, as seen recently in the protests against unchecked gentrification in Mexico City. There, demonstrators unexpectedly revived 1970s-style anti-colonial slogans like \u201cGringos, go home!\u201d Even though, in reality, many of the gentrifiers are Mexican nationals who rent or buy property in what were once middle-class neighborhoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So far, the Sheinbaum administration is playing both sides. On the one hand, it issued an arrest warrant for Hern\u00e1n Berm\u00fadez Requena, former public security chief under a powerful Morena senator, over ties to La Barredora cartel\u2014a local franchise of the also-powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which brought a wave of violence to that southeastern Mexican state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, during a tour of the northwest, President Sheinbaum repeatedly voiced opposition to \u201cinterventionism\u201d and demanded \u201crespect for sovereignty\u201d\u2014a message that mirrors the \u201cYankee go home\u201d chants heard on Mexico City\u2019s streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Sheinbaum government is clearly in a serious bind\u2014and time is running out. While the blanket tariff was extended for 90 days, the sword of Damocles still hangs overhead. The Trump administration is likely to keep pushing and securing concessions, with no guarantee that once its demands are met, it won\u2019t just ask for more\u2014especially on the crucial issue of narco-politicians within Morena. So, while the 90-day window offers Mexico a breather, it may also prove a nightmare for the country\u2019s negotiators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the end of those 90 days, we\u2019ll see what executive decisions Sheinbaum makes in response to Trump\u2019s tactic of adjusting tariffs based on Mexico\u2019s progress in curbing irregular migration and fentanyl trafficking. And it\u2019s worth noting that this synthetic drug, beyond its deadly components, now contains an even more dangerous element: political significance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is where the bilateral relationship slips. Sheinbaum doesn\u2019t want to go after her political allies\u2014and even if she did, she lacks both the power and the will to do so. Washington knows it. That\u2019s why it calibrates the political and media pressure carefully, targeting a government that has shown willingness to cooperate with the MAGA project on some fronts, but stands ideologically aligned with leftist governments in Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
*Machine translation, proofread by Ricardo Aceves.<\/sup><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caught between cooperation and sovereignty, Sheinbaum must decide how far to yield to Trump\u2019s agenda without undermining her political base.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":331,"featured_media":49903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16868,16872],"tags":[15635],"gps":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-49909","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-relaiciones-internacionales-en","8":"category-mexico-en","9":"tag-debates"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/331"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49909"},{"taxonomy":"gps","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gps?post=49909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}