Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum appeared to contradict President-elect Donald Trump’s claim that the two have struck a deal to stop migration to the US border.
After a phone call on Wednesday, Trump posted online: “She has agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”
Sheinbaum responded quickly that she had reiterated Mexico’s position was not to close borders, but to address migration while respecting human rights.
On Monday, Trump alarmed US trading partners as he vowed upon taking office in January to slap an across-the-board tariff of 25% on Mexico and Canada, and a 10% tariff on China.
He said the import duties on Mexico and Canada would only be removed once illegal immigration and drug trafficking to the US had stopped.
He said China would be subject to tariffs until it cracked down on smuggling of the drug fentanyl.
Sheinbaum vowed earlier on Wednesday to retaliate if the US triggered a trade war.
“If there are US tariffs, Mexico would also raise tariffs,” she told a press conference.
She was joined by Mexican Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who urged more regional co-operation.
“It’s a shot in the foot,” Ebrard said of Trump’s proposed duties, which appear to breach the USMCA trade deal that Trump himself struck in 2018 during his first presidency between the US, Mexico and Canada.
Following a phone call with Trump, however, Sheinbaum initially posted on X that the two had had “an excellent conversation”.
“We discussed Mexico’s strategy on the migration phenomenon and I shared that [migrant] caravans are not arriving at the northern border because they are being taken care of in Mexico.”
Trump later took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to offer a slightly different interpretation of what had been agreed during their conversation.
“Mexico will stop people from going to our Southern Border, effective immediately,” he wrote.
Sheinbaum later went back on X to say that she had “explained to him [Trump] the comprehensive strategy that Mexico has followed to address the migration phenomenon, respecting human rights”.
“We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders but to build bridges between governments and between peoples,” she added.
Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held an emergency meeting on Wednesday with 10 provincial premiers to discuss how to respond to Trump’s tariff threat.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said afterwards that the federal government and the premiers had agreed to present a united front on the issue.
There were signs of division, however, as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith expressed concern about whether Trudeau was the best person to negotiate with the incoming US president.
She told CBC: “I don’t think we should underestimate the personal animus between these two leaders.
“And if he’s [Trudeau] not the right person to have at the negotiation table, we need to make sure that the right person is.”
Mainland China authorities have yet to comment directly on the 10% tariff promised by Trump.
But a Chinese embassy official in Washington has said no-one will win a trade war.
Illegal immigration became a defining issue in the 2024 White House election race that culminated in Trump’s resounding victory this month. He campaigned on a promise to seal the US-Mexico border.
After an unprecedented influx of millions of undocumented immigrants became politically toxic for Democrats, outgoing US President Joe Biden introduced restrictions during this election cycle that sharply reduced illegal crossings.
Under US diplomatic pressure, Mexico has been conducting its largest ever migrant crackdown, bussing and flying non-Mexican migrants to the country’s south, far from the US border.
The practice wears out the exhausted migrants, leaving them without funds to continue their journey.
Thousands have been so defeated by repeated experiences of this kind of so-called internal deportation, that they have voluntarily requested to be deported to their home nations.
When Trump takes office he will inherit a situation in which fewer undocumented migrants are being apprehended at the US southern border than at any other time over the past four years.
By BBC News
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