For the second time in less than a decade, Mexico is preparing to negotiate with President-elect Donald J. Trump, who is threatening the neighboring country with sky-high tariffs, mass deportations and military crackdowns on cartels.
The stakes are huge for Mexico’s 130 million inhabitants. Among major economies, Mexico is extremely dependent on the United States, sending about 80 percent of its exports to the US market.
This time, Mexico’s main negotiators are taking a decisive position in the negotiations with Mr. Trump. Some of them can draw experience from the first Trump administration: Mexico’s populist president at the time, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, established a warm relationship with Mr. Trump, and Mexico avoided high tariffs while agreeing to demands to curb migration.
“We will find a solution because we have structural advantages,” Marcelo Ebrard, the economy minister, said this month, citing factors such as greater economic interdependence between the two countries and a reduction in fentanyl-related deaths and migration.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum set the tone for this approach. While the Mexican government has been unable to meet with the new Trump administration, it has mixed conciliatory words for Mr. Trump with rhetorical rejection and vows that Mexico could reciprocate retaliatory duties own.
“We coordinate, we cooperate, but we will never become subservient,” Ms. Sheinbaum said in a speech this month.
At the same time, Ms. Sheinbaum’s administration has already mobilized to address some of Mr. Trump’s concerns, expanding efforts to deter migration and increasing seizures illicit opioids.
The cornerstone of this strategy is a bet that the new administration in Washington needs Mexico and its fast-growing, low-cost industrial base if the United States hopes to counter its biggest rival: China.
Here are four factors that point to Mexico’s preparations to face the new Trump administration.
Mexico is increasingly important to the US economy.
Economic relations between Mexico and the United States have changed significantly since Mr. Trump was last in the White House, especially as a result of the disruption of global supply chains caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Mexico eclipsed China as the United States’ top trading partner in goods in 2023, as manufacturers shifted operations to Mexico to be closer to the US market.
Trade ties deepened further last year, when Mexico ousted China to become the main source of imports for the United States and a top destination for Americans food export.
“It’s an unprecedented level of interdependence,” said Diego Marroquín Bitar, a scholar who specializes in North American trade at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank.
The Mexican government is pointing to those trade ties as it argues that imposing U.S. tariffs on Mexico could increase inflation and hurt American consumers.
But those deepening ties also leave Mexico with increased vulnerability.
One can be remittances. Mexicans working in the United States sent home $63 billion in 2023, twice as much as when Mr. Trump took office eight years ago, and mass deportations could cause that number to drop.
Tax remittance proposals, including a bill sponsored by Vice President-elect JD Vance, also gaining momentum.
Migration flows and mortality from fentanyl are decreasing.
Although Mr. Trump has repeatedly raised the alarm about migration from Mexico, illegal crossings along the US-Mexico border are on the rise the lowest level as of summer 2020. Only about 46,000 people crossed the border illegally in November, the lowest number under President Biden.
Biden administration limitations on asylum for migrants contributed to this decline. But so did policy in Mexico, which sought to deter migrants, mostly from other Latin American countries, from reaching the US border.
Mexico fell apart migrant caravans and spread the shadow busing program which transported thousands of migrants from the country’s northern border to places deep in the south.
Just in the last quarter of 2024. Mexico reinforced This operation to detain around 475,000 migrants, the authorities said, is more than double the number detained in the first nine months of this year. Most of these migrants are quickly releasedallowing them to remain in Mexico; only a small part is deported to their homelands.
Another issue that Mr. Trump has often mentioned is the impact of illegal drugs, particularly fentanyl, coming across the border. After rising to alarming levels, overdose deaths from illegal drugs are also falling. They fell by about 14.5 percent in the 12 months ending June 2024 compared to the same period a year earlier.
Experts say treatment, prevention and education efforts have expanded in the United States played a role in this decline. Although more evidence is needed, US efforts to crack down on chemical precursors from China and Mexican cartels using these chemicals fentanyl production may also limit supplies.
Ms. Sheinbaum also began targeting the fentanyl trade. Last month, Mexican security forces captured 20 million doses of the drug in the largest seizure of synthetic opioids in the country.
Cartel violence continues to grow in vast areas.
Neither reduced border crossings nor fentanyl overdoses could change much if Mr. Trump chooses to focus on the cartel bloodbath that has engulfed large parts of Mexico as justification for imposing tariffs on his exports.
Clashes between rival cartel factions have recently turned the northwestern state of Sinaloa into war zone. Brutal politics assassinations they cast a pall over Guerrero in southwestern Mexico.
Battles for turf in Guanajuato, an auto manufacturing center northwest of Mexico City, are marked by one massacre after more in recent weeks.
During his previous mandateand again during the campaign for his new mandate, Mr. Trump has raised the possibility of taking military action against the cartels as a way to limit their smuggling of illegal drugs into the United States. The potential designation of these groups as “terrorist organizations” could pave the way for such moves.
The Mexican government has long viewed such a possibility as an almost unthinkable violation of its sovereignty. However, some former officials with previous experience in negotiations with Mr. Trump warns that Mexico must take such threats seriously.
Ms. Sheinbaum noted the readiness last week Marco RubioMr. Trump’s choice for Secretary of State, to cooperate in suppressing cartel activities.
“We take him at his word,” Ms. Sheinbaum said of Mr. Rubio.
“Trump 2.0 will be a different Trump,” said Ildefonso Guajardo, a former economy secretary who negotiated with the Trump administration in 2017 and 2018. “His team will be far less balanced in terms of trying to make him aware of the consequences of some decisions.”
And while fentanyl-related deaths are declining in the United States, the drug still claims tens of thousands of lives each year. The explosion of violence in Sinaloa underscores how the groups responsible for the fentanyl trade remain active and well-armed.
Such is the economic profile of China in Mexico.
Recent a flood of imported Chinese cars in Mexico has increased tensions over China’s penetration of key industries in North America.
Mexico, which runs a $105 billion trade deficit with China, has moved quickly in recent weeks to ease concerns that China could use its foothold in Mexico as a way to gain greater access to US markets.
Mexico has imposed tariffs that are considered targeting Chinese online retailers such as Temu and Shein then unveiled new industrial policies last week aimed at reducing imports from China while strengthening supply chains in the United States.
With such measures, the Mexican government seeks to assert its claim that the United States needs Mexico to counter the greater economic threat of China. But will that be enough for Mr. Trump?
If not, and if ties with Washington deteriorate significantly, Mexico still has a sort of “nuclear option” that involves strengthening its economic ties with China, according to Scott Morgenstern, professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh.
“Mexico could turn to Washington’s biggest economic rival at a time when Beijing seeks to exert greater influence in Latin America,” said Mr. Morgenstern.
