To make it easier, President Claudia Sheinbaum from Mexico announced on Monday that she had prevented the Trump administration plan to impose 25 percent of tariffs on Mexican goods. Initially, it was set to take effect at midnight, the tariffs were postponed in a month, she said.
“We have this month to work, to convince each other that this is the best path forward,” Mrs. Sheinbaum said at her regular morning record after talking to President Trump. By suggesting that she could fully be able to withstand penalties, she said she told her American colleague: “We will deliver the results. Good results for your people, good results for Mexican people. “
The announcement was seen as the victory of the Mexican government in dealing with Mr. Trump, who set a new tone of aggression in the first weeks of his Presidency. He requested that even some of the closest allies of the United States adhere to his demands or face the consequences in the form of tariffs or perhaps even military forces.
The deal, however, will make Mexico on a critical 30-day test during which it not only has to continue its recent progress, but will further focus even more on two lasting challenges in the country: drug trade and migration.
According to the terms of the agreement, Mexico will publish an additional 10,000 Mexican national guards at the border. In return, said Mrs. Sheinbaum, the US government will work to stop the flow of weapons in Mexico.
In his own statement, Mr. Trump did not mention the promise to help suppress the firearm trade, but celebrated the arrangement of Mexican troops.
While Mexico spent last year enhancing his immigration implementation, which has already contributed to the drastic reduction of American border crossings, the issue of drug trade is much more complex. Mexico will demand “a very clear, very well defined plan,” said Ildonfonso Guajardo, a former economy minister who negotiated with the first Trump administration.
Mr. Trump and Thomas Homan, Border Czar AdministrationThey are repeatedly guilty of the fantanil overdose crisis in the United States on Mexican cartels, as well as on migrants, say they move drugs across the border. Mr Homan falsely said Fox News in Mexican cartels “killed a quarter of a million Americans with Fentanil.”
Since 2019, Mexico has displaced China as the greatest supplier of the fantanila to the United States. In addition to being extraordinarily powerful, the drug is very easy to make – and even easier to smuggle across the border, hidden under clothing or in glove compartments. According to US prosecutors, Cartel Sinalo spends only $ 800 on chemicals to produce pounds that can have up to $ 640,000 in the United States.
Mexico has been a source of almost all of Fentanil that US police have been seized in recent years, and the amount of border crossing has increased ten times in the last five years. But federal data show that they are not brought by not migrants but American citizens recruited from cartel organizations. More than 80 percent of people who have been convicted of the traffic of the fental on the southern border are US nationals.
“Everything that is incredibly harder to start and control the market,” said Jaime López-Aranda, a security analyst based in Mexico City.
Mrs. Sheinbaum’s management has already enhanced efforts in the fight against Fentanil since she has taken over her duty in October, including the biggest drug attack – about 20 million doses – Ever recorded in Mexico. Security forces are regularly reported about progress in arrests and dismantled drug production laboratories.
But experts ask how many recesses these efforts truly represent. “Mexico can continue to carry out symbolic actions as he has done lately,” said Mr. López-Arand, “but he can do a little more.”
The guidance of the full war on cartels would probably return and trigger more waves of violence in Mexico, analysts say. The country experienced these consequences before.
Following the assumption of duty in 2006, President Felipe Calderón announced the war with criminal groups. The idea was to eradicate them and loosen their grip on the ground. However, targeting cartel leaders and participation in direct conflicts led only to fall into violent, brutal cells, which led to one of the bloodiest Mexican periods.
“What will even happen after we destroy all the laboratories?” said Mr. Guajardo. “These guys will only focus more on extortion, theft and murder. Mexico will be left to solve only the problem.”
According to the agreement announced on Monday, Mexico will also strengthen security forces at the border. Unlike the United States, Mexico does not have a certain security forces dedicated to the border patrolling, instead relying on a combination of the Military and National Guard.
Experts questioned how effectively arranging 10,000 additional soldiers would be to provide promised results of Mexico when it comes to fentanil.
“Ten thousand members may sound a lot, but it’s all in detail,” said Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, a researcher of drug policy at the Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation at UC San Diego. “If you only have them on the border, it does not apply to the whole chain of the production of the fentanil.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an older colleague from the US Immigration Council, noted that this was the third time in six years when Mexico committed to send a large deployment of the National Guard to the US border.
Although Mexican forces “will try to achieve results at all costs”, it would be a more effective strategy for officials from both countries to share more intelligence and information to stop drug flow, said Jonathan Maza, a Mexican security analyst.
The lack of cooperation was something to which US officials complained during the administration of Mrs. Sheinbaum, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Given the importance of Mexico avoiding tariffs, Mr. Maza said that the National Guard could achieve results in the short and medium term. But, he warned, criminal groups are likely to adapt.
After suppressing migration and illegal crossings on the border, Mexico may have a clearer path to success, adopting several effective measures last year.
The troops of the National Guard are deployed to immigration control spots from north to south, and migration officials also have Established a “decompression” policy in which migrants lose from concentrated areas in the north further south to press from the border. Mexican authorities have been used for years in jobs, but its expansion in 2024 emphasized the policies of the land of land on migration.
The breakdown of migrant caravans has headed to the United States is another step that has been taken by Mexican officials in recent years. When it appeared in the weeks that led to Mr. Trump’s duty, everyone was dissolved.
Mexican stricter attitude, paired with President Joseph R. Bidne Jr. Executive command Last summer, basically preventing unproven migrants to receive asylum on the border, they contributed to a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration at the border 2024. In December, US officials of border patrols recorded only 47,326 illegal crossings – a sharp drop with a record 249,740 documented a year earlier.
Mexican authorities also introduced bureaucratic obstacles for asylum migrants and seekers.
“The Mexican strategy has exhausted and worn out migrants,” said Mauro Pérez Bravo, a former head of the Civil Council of the National Migration Institute, which evaluates the migration policy of the country. “What he did was emotionally and physically exhausted people to prevent them from coming to the United States.”
In exchange for the troop deployment to the border and stopping the flow of fental and migrants to the United States, Mrs. Sheinbaum said she had secured Mr. Trump’s agreement to do more to prevent the US-founded firearm to enter Mexico.
“These strong weapons that illegally arrest criminal groups and give them a fiery strength,” she said.
This is not the first time Mexico has made that argument.
2021 sued several weapons manufacturers And one distributor, accusing them of devastating, decades of bloodshed from which Mexico struggled to recover. The Supreme Court of the United States will decide This year can Mexico sue weapons manufacturers in the United States. AND Recent analysis They showed that almost 9,000 weapons dealers operate in cities in Arizona, California, Novi Mexico and Texas.
But in his own note, Mr. Trump did not mention Mrs. Sheinbaum’s request. It is unclear that his administration could actually fulfill such commitment and what if nothing, Mexico would do if he did not do so.
James Wagner,, Paulina Villegas and Simon Romero contribute to reporting.
