MEXICO CITY – Tens of thousands of Mexicans poured into the country’s most important plaza on Sunday to cheer President Claudia Sheinbaum after she succeeded in one of the most daunting challenges in global politics: negotiating with Donald Trump.
The U.S. president on Thursday backed down on his plans to impose 25 percent tariffs on all Mexican and Canadian products “out of respect for President Sheinbaum,” he said. It was the second time in two months that the Mexican leader won a delay of the penalties.
Supporters of Sheinbaum’s party, top business leaders and ordinary citizens packed the capital’s iconic Zócalo on Sunday, chanting “Mexico! Mexico!” in a sign of how the nation’s first female president has unified the population. Sheinbaum’s approval rating leaped from 70 percent when she took office in October to 85 percent last month, according to a poll by the newspaper El Financiero.
Politicians around the world, including the leaders of Ukraine, Colombia and Canada, have been upended in the riptide of Trump’s wrath. Sheinbaum, in contrast, has emerged from her encounters with the U.S. president “looking even and measured,” said Carin Zissis, a fellow at the Mexico Institute of the Wilson Center in Washington. “It has given her a global presence that is distinct.”
Sheinbaum has made significant concessions to Trump, sending 10,000 more troops to the border to deter fentanyl shipments and illegal migration – his stated reason for imposing the tariffs. She handed over 29 drug-cartel operatives in a massive operation involving 20 jets. But she hasn’t hesitated to challenge him, either.
“We cannot cede our sovereignty,” Sheinbaum told the massive, flag-waving crowd. “Nor can we let our people be hurt by decisions that foreign governments or powers make.”
As she has navigated Mexico’s most important bilateral relationship, analysts say, Sheinbaum has shaken off the image that she is merely a dutiful protégée of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the founder of their leftist Morena party.
Sheinbaum still faces enormous challenges. Trump may call her a “very wonderful woman,” but his administration hasn’t ruled out U.S. military strikes on fentanyl targets in Mexico. He could cripple Mexico’s export-reliant economy with recurrent tariff threats and pressure on auto manufacturers to relocate to the United States.
“The uncertainty and volatility are going to remain,” said Julián Ventura, a former senior Foreign Ministry official. But Sheinbaum is among a handful of leaders – including Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer – who have built a constructive dialogue with Trump, Ventura said, adding: “It’s a win.”
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Sheinbaum is no longer just López Obrador’s protégée
Sheinbaum’s diplomatic skill has surprised Mexicans who viewed her mainly as López Obrador’s handpicked successor.
It’s not that Sheinbaum lacked her own political credentials – she served as Mexico City mayor and won June’s presidential election by just over 30 percentage points.
But she has been criticized as a brainy technocrat who moved in lockstep with López Obrador, even imitating his country-boy drawl. The Mexican constitution prohibits presidents from seeking reelection. Nonetheless, López Obrador, known by his initials, AMLO, still wields enormous influence in the Morena party.
Analysts questioned whether Sheinbaum could replicate López Obrador’s friendly relationship with Trump. The two men sit at opposite ends of the political spectrum, but they bonded as charismatic founders of antiestablishment movements.
Sheinbaum, in contrast, is a low-key scientist with a Ph.D. in energy engineering. She can be so unemotional that her main rival in the presidential race, Xóchitl Gálvez, dubbed her the “Ice Lady.”
How has Sheinbaum succeeded with Trump?
She says she has benefited from AMLO’s warm relationship with the U.S. leader. But she has brought her own strengths to the job. She prepares rigorously for calls with Trump, aides say, consulting her cabinet ministers, business leaders and others, and studying the U.S. president’s statements. She doesn’t take umbrage at his insults, they say, and instead calmly lays out facts.
For example, after Trump said that he would go ahead with the 25 percent tariffs on March 4, alleging a lack of progress by Mexico and Canada on stopping cross-border fentanyl shipments, Sheinbaum sent him a graphic with data from the Department of Homeland Security. It showed U.S. seizures at the southern border plummeting since October. Less fentanyl was reaching the United States because it was being stopped in Mexico, Sheinbaum told Trump.
“He didn’t know about this graphic until we sent it to him,” she later told reporters.
In another call, Sheinbaum told Trump about the Mexican government’s publicity campaign to discourage fentanyl use. Trump was impressed. “You know, I make so many calls, and I never learn anything from anybody,” the U.S. president said last month. “And I spoke to this woman, as soon as she said it … I said, ‘Exactly, what a great idea.’” He soon announced a multimillion-dollar campaign of his own.
In both cases, the reality is a bit more complicated than how Sheinbaum portrayed it. Analysts say there are any number of possible reasons for the reduction in U.S. fentanyl seizures, including infighting in the Sinaloa cartel, a main trafficker of the opioid.
As for the ad campaign against fentanyl, it was largely designed to impress the U.S. government, said one prominent Morena official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment. Mexico has no fentanyl use epidemic.
Still, Sheinbaum has also made politically risky moves to assuage Trump’s concerns, starting when he first threatened to impose tariffs in early February. She has roughly doubled military forces at the U.S. border and handed over the 29 cartel leaders in an operation that legal scholars said violated Mexican law. Mexico has taken back not just its own migrants but also people from other countries deported from the United States.
Sheinbaum has proved to have a good sense of timing. While Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has quickly announced tit-for-tat tariffs following the U.S. threats, Sheinbaum has held off each time, seeking dialogue. As U.S. stock markets plunged and retailers warned of higher prices, the pressure mounted on Trump to call off the measures.
The Mexican government “built off that pressure without having to actually put out their own measures,” said John Creamer, a former senior U.S. diplomat in Mexico. The result? The Mexicans “don’t get Trump’s ire, the way the Canadians do.”
Sheinbaum is consolidating her power
Morena holds majorities in both houses of Congress and a virtual lock on power, thanks largely to López Obrador’s popularity. Now, analysts say, Sheinbaum is coming into her own.
When asked in the February poll who exercises the most power in Mexico, 49 percent of respondents answered Sheinbaum, while only 11 percent answered López Obrador. (Roughly one-fourth of Mexicans replied “organized crime.”)
Sheinbaum’s expulsion of the 29 drug traffickers was a pivotal moment, political analyst Carlos Heredia said. “With this action, she essentially slammed her fist on the table and said, ‘I’m in command,’” he said.
Still, Mexico is probably facing a difficult period, with a slowing economy and growing wariness among investors. They have been spooked not just by possible tariffs but also by a judicial reform backed by Sheinbaum that is likely to reduce the independence of Mexico’s courts, analysts say.
Sheinbaum scheduled Sunday’s rally to announce her countermeasures to Trump’s tariffs. Once they were postponed, it turned into a victory celebration.
Luis Ramirez, 74, an electrician from Michoacán state who attended, said Sheinbaum “has all of our support.” But the negotiations with Trump continue. “As our president said, we need to stay serene and patient – very patient,” he said.