A 'Trump whisperer'? Mexican president's strategy faces its biggest test yet

MEXICO CITY — The president stood amid the admiring throngs and declared victory.

“We person gathered present to congratulate ourselves due to the fact that — successful relations with the United States, with its authorities — dialog and respect person prevailed,” President Claudia Sheinbaum told the adoring multitudes gathered successful the capital’s historical cardinal plaza, oregon Zócalo, successful a mega-event organized by her ruling party.

Sheinbaum’s triumphalist exhortations connected March 9 dramatized however she has, to date, successfully walked an highly precarious choky rope: Appeasing President Trump and postponing enactment of astir of his threatened tariffs, portion besides convincing chap Mexicans that she won’t jettison nationalist sovereignty to avert import duties that could propulsion the already shaky system into recession.

“We volition ever spot respect for our beloved state and our blessed federation supra all,” Sheinbaum said.

Her scrupulously calibrated responses — she repeatedly stresses the request to support a “cool head” connected tariff talks — person earned Sheinbaum a estimation arsenic a benignant of Trump whisperer, a uncommon nationalist person who seems to person figured retired however to play the mercurial New Yorker. Her eleventh hr telephone calls with Trump person doubly helped stall the imposition of new tariffs.

Thousands of supporters be a rally arsenic Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum speaks astatine the Zócalo successful Mexico City connected March 9. The rally was held aft President Trump paused suspending tariffs connected Mexico a fewer days earlier.

(Anadolu via Getty Images)

Many Mexicans applaud Sheinbaum’s handling of a delicate predicament.

“It’s hard erstwhile you person to negociate the economical aboriginal of your state with idiosyncratic similar Trump, who says 1 happening today, thing other tomorrow,” said Laura Mendoza, 36, who runs a store successful the superior selling nutritional goods. “She’s facing a batch of challenges. We person to springiness her time. This country’s galore problems won’t beryllium solved successful a fewer months.”

The U.S. president himself has lauded Sheinbaum arsenic a “marvelous woman,” a stark opposition to his habitual disparagement of different satellite leaders, notably erstwhile Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Unlike Trudeau, who blasted Trump and called his import taxes a “dumb idea,” Sheinbaum has kept the code of her nationalist comments direct, but civil, adjacent arsenic Trump denounced an “intolerable alliance” betwixt her authorities and organized crime. She besides has taken action.

Sheinbaum has dispatched troops to the bluish borderline to deter amerciable immigration and launched a law-enforcement crackdown that has seen surging arrests of alleged cause kingpins, near-daily takedowns of cause labs and grounds seizures of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid blamed for tens of thousands of U.S. overdose deaths.

Her medication adjacent handed implicit 29 purported cause cartel leaders to Washington successful a fast-track process that bypassed ceremonial extradition procedures.

Consigned to the rearview mirror, it would seem, is the “hugs not bullets” attack of her predecessor and mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who eschewed nonstop confrontations with cartels successful favour of backing societal programs successful a mostly futile effort to deter susceptible younker from joining organized transgression — which is among Mexico’s largest employers.

Thus far, U.S. instrumentality enforcement authorities — who had a strained narration with President López Obrador — person mostly praised Sheinbaum’s practice successful sometimes touchy operations, including stepped-up concealed CIA drone flights implicit Mexico successful evident hunt of illicit cause labs.

Apart from racking up planetary plaudits, Mexico’s archetypal pistillate president appears genuinely fashionable among many, if not most, Mexicans, contempt the inevitable complaints astir the country’s seemingly intractable problems — rampant crime, rising prices, profoundly ingrained corruption.

Polls person shown Sheinbaum, who took bureau Oct. 1, with bonzer support ratings topping 70%.

Still, immoderate wonderment however overmuch of her popularity is connected shaky ground, a perchance short-lived holdover from the enduring affection for López Obrador, who showered assistance connected needy Mexicans. It was a strategy that, portion aiding long-neglected mediocre and working-class masses and gathering grassroots governmental support, has, successful the presumption of critics, hiked deficits and near the state successful a parlous economical predicament.

“Although the chill caput that has bought her clip against the threats of Trump is laudable … the sword of Damocles that Trumpism brandishes implicit our cervix has not disappeared,” columnist Denise Dresser wrote successful Mexico’s Reforma newspaper. “Behind [Sheinbaum’s] idiosyncratic popularity and her enactment acclaim determination are inescapable realities,” Dresser continued, citing the country’s economical difficulties and heavy divisions astir a Sheinbaum-backed judicial betterment bundle that detractors presumption arsenic a extremist measurement toward one-party hegemony.

In the eyes of many, Sheinbaum’s sanguine assertions that Mexico volition bypass a tariff calamity look somewhat premature, similar the praises she has received worldwide arsenic a person who knows however to grip Trump.

“The president says she is assured determination volition beryllium nary much tariffs, but that is an enactment of faith,” wrote columnist Raymundo Riva Palacio successful El Financiero. “Trump is indecipherable, adjacent for those closest to him.”

To date, skeptics note, Sheinbaum has won nary guarantees from the Trump administration, beyond putting disconnected the menace of 25% import taxes connected astir merchandise shipped to the United States, the destination of much than 80% of Mexico’s exports. Nor did Trump exempt Mexico from tariffs connected alloy and aluminum imports imposed connected Wednesday.

Those levies look to stroke a spread successful the intricate architecture of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the duty-free commercialized accord negotiated by the archetypal Trump medication arsenic a “wonderful” (Trump’s word) successor to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which Trump labeled “the worst commercialized woody ever made.”

Unlike Canada, Mexico decided not to enforce retaliatory levies connected U.S. imports successful effect to the metallic tariffs, preferring to hold until the adjacent tariff deadline, April 2.

The March 9 downtown rally was primitively intended arsenic a forum to unveil slap-back tariffs against U.S. imports, a amusement of musculus by Mexico. Although Trump paused the tariffs, Sheinbaum opted to spell up with the rally, calling it a “party.”

“What did the president celebrate?” asked Riva Palacio. “A caller pause, which doesn’t cancel the threat.”

Sheinbaum, a erstwhile politician of Mexico City, was the handpicked successor of López Obrador, laminitis of the Morena enactment that present dominates Mexican politics. Both are lifelong activists of the left. And some erstwhile denounced free-trade arsenic a racket to payment the rich.

A humanities snapshot of Sheinbaum — past a young idiosyncratic doing doctoral enactment astatine the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory successful California — shows her with chap Mexican students protesting the beingness astatine Stanford of erstwhile Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, an avid free-trader. The youthful Sheinbum, hairsbreadth successful a headband, defiantly brandishes a placard declaring (in English): “Fair Trade and Democracy Now!!”

But some López Obrador and Sheinbaum — the old-school, back-slapping pol and the steely, U.S.-educated technocrat — yet embraced U.S.-Mexico commerce. And some enactment ideology speech and turned pragmatic successful their machinations to placate Trump, contempt his agelong past of demeaning Mexico and Mexican immigrants.

But Sheinbaum besides isn’t shy astir talking backmost to the Trump administration. When Trump declared that the Gulf of Mexico should beryllium called the Gulf of America, she sarcastically suggested that the United States beryllium renamed “Mexican America,” citing colonial-era maps with that title.

“That sounds beautiful, no?” she quipped.

When asked Friday astir caller comments from Ronald Johnson, a erstwhile subject serviceman nominated arsenic U.S. ambassador to Mexico, that “everything is connected the table” erstwhile it comes to curtailing cause cartels, Sheinbaum scoffed.

She and different officials are profoundly acrophobic astir the imaginable of unilateral U.S. subject strikes against Mexican cause cartels — an thought that Trump has agelong seemed to embrace.

Even much than tariffs, a U.S. subject onslaught connected Mexican ungraded would apt trial Sheinbaum’s cool-headed approach.

“We don’t agree,” Sheinbaum responded erstwhile asked astir Johnson’s militaristic musings. “He said everything is connected the table. That’s not connected the table. Nor connected the chair. Nor connected the floor. Nor anywhere.”

Special analogous Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.