MEXICO CITY — Few places in the Americas stand to be as jolted by a new Trump presidency as Mexico, the nation of nearly 130 million people that the president-elect made the target of numerous threats during his campaign.
Now as Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, Mexico finds itself again at the center of his aggressive stances on trade, immigration and drug trafficking.
Despite a sharp decline in border crossings this year after Mexico emerged as an enforcer of the Biden administration’s migration restrictions, Trump’s campaign vows suggest a complex and contentious road ahead.
He is promising steep tariffs, renegotiated trade deals and even military intervention against cartels. How Mexico’s leaders, under President Claudia Sheinbaum, navigate this landscape will be pivotal, potentially setting the tone for North American diplomacy for years to come.
Here are four things to know about how a newly elected Trump might reshape the United States’ relations with Mexico.
1. Trump has vowed to bolster border security and deport millions of migrants in the country illegally.
Like his predecessor, Trump has big plans for remaking America’s immigration system. But their visions could not be more different.
Illegal crossings at the border are at their lowest levels in more than four years. Still, Trump has said his government would hire 10,000 new agents to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border and proposed using some of the military’s budget for border security.
“We’ve seen what Trump does. What he is proposing is the 3.0 version of the same increased pressures on Mexico,” said Tonatiuh Guillén, a former head of Mexico’s National Migration Institute, adding that in 2019 Trump’s demands led Mexico to take a militarized approach to enforcement.
“Mexico gave in to the pressures back then, and the question is whether Mexico will give in again,” Guillén added. “I think the likelihood it will is high.”
For the past two U.S. administrations, Mexico effectively turned into an extension of the White House’s border policies. It became the wall, some analysts have said, that Trump vowed to build during his first term.
However, this election could lead the United States to enact new transit and entry bans, further tightening the border.
“Many immigrants would not be able to enter through regular pathways, as they are doing now, or they would be very quickly turned back from the United States,” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.
Trump has also vowed to carry out the largest deportation program in U.S. history, targeting many of the estimated 11 million migrants living in the United States without legal permission.
Migrants in the country illegally are most commonly from Mexico, accounting for about 4 million people. While a mass deportation program would face legal and logistical challenges, Raul Hinojosa, director of UCLA’s North American Integration and Development Center, said that there are growing concerns about the effect that the such deportations could have on Mexico.
If Mexican migrants are sent home, much of the money they send back to Mexico — $63 billion in 2023 — would plummet, depleting Mexico’s economy of one of its most important sources of income, Hinojosa said.
Mexico could also find itself pressured, as in the past, to accept Venezuelans, Nicaraguans or Cubans, who are sometimes unable to be deported to their origin countries for diplomatic reasons.
Unemployment in Mexico would also increase, with many of the deportees in the suddenly larger labor force looking for jobs.
“We’re going to see deportees who are harder to reintegrate,” said Eunice Rendón, coordinator of Migrant Agenda, a coalition of migrant advocacy groups.
Taken together, Mexico’s economy could be pushed into a sharp recession, according to a study by researchers from UCLA, the Petersen Institute for International Economics and the U.S. Naval Academy.
2. Trump has threatened up to 100% tariffs.
Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on Mexico, which has eclipsed China to become the largest source of imports in the United States. At one of his last rallies, he vowed to immediately place 25% tariffs on all goods from Mexico unless the government halts the flow of migrants and drugs to the United States.
That could send shock waves across Mexico, which is exceptionally dependent on trade with the United States. Around 80% of its exports go to the American market, according to Capital Economics, a research firm based in London.
“Mexico now looks potentially like the most exposed major economy” to Trump tariffs, said William Jackson, Capital Economics’ chief emerging markets economist.
Trump has also threatened to impose 100% tariffs — or even 200% — on vehicles imported from Mexico. That could deal a staggering blow to an industry that exports nearly $90 billion of finished vehicles to the United States, accounting for about 5% of Mexico’s gross domestic product.
But given how deeply connected production chains are between Mexico and the United States, a move like this would likely harm American companies and consumers as well.
“Trump calls himself ‘The Tariff Man,’” said Pedro Casas, general director of the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico. “If you put 25% tariffs on everything exported from Mexico today, you’ll cause an inflationary shock in the U.S. market. I mean, that is not viable.”
3. Trump has said he would use military force against Mexico’s drug cartels.
During his previous term, Trump suggested shooting missiles into Mexico to take out drug labs. Other Republicans leaders have since embraced the idea of using U.S. military force against cartels in Mexican territory — even without Mexico’s consent.
In an interview with Fox News in July, Trump was asked whether he was prepared to use military force against Mexican drug cartels. “Absolutely,” Trump said. “Mexico’s going to have to straighten it out really fast, or the answer is absolutely.”
Such a move would be “extremely damaging” for the U.S.-Mexico relationship, said Rebecca Bill Chavez, head of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based research institute. It could jeopardize all cooperation between the two countries, she said, including commercial ties, but also efforts to control the flow of U.S.-bound migrants and drugs, such as fentanyl.
Mexican officials have warned that violation of the country’s sovereignty will not be tolerated.
“We are a country that must be respected,” Roberto Velasco Álvarez, the top North American official in Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, told The New York Times last year. “We are not anyone’s colony or protectorate.”
Others caution that military strikes on cartels or targeted assassinations of their leaders may barely affect the drug flow into the United States.
Time and again during the decades-long drug wars in Latin America, similar efforts actually opened the way for new suppliers to muscle into the drug trade — as Mexican cartels did in the 1990s when Colombian cartels were on the decline.
“Maybe you get some heads put on a post, or whatever the 21st-century equivalent of that would be,” said Christopher Fettweis, a political science professor at Tulane University. “It’s not going to actually stop drugs from coming in.
4. Mexico’s previous president had a good rapport with Trump. Sheinbaum will try to replicate this.
Sheinbaum has repeatedly said that Mexico would collaborate with any U.S. leader, including Trump. “There is no reason to worry,” she told reporters Wednesday morning. “There will be good relations with the United States, I am convinced of that.”
Earlier this week, Trump said at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, that he would inform her “on Day One or sooner” that if Mexico did not stop an “onslaught” of criminals and drugs, he would immediately impose tariffs.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum’s predecessor and mentor, also faced Trump’s promised tariffs. He diffused those threats by deploying Mexico’s armed forces to manage the flow of migrants. The informal agreement between López Obrador and Trump was that Mexico would manage migration issues, while the White House would refrain from interfering in Mexico’s domestic affairs.
The strategy worked for López Obrador — who shares a populist, larger-than-life personality with Trump — to the point that he boasted, on several occasions, how he had convinced Trump to moderate his decisions.
It is unclear whether Sheinbaum will have the same influence on Trump. But on her Tuesday news conference, she seemed to send a message for both Democrats and Republicans. “Sometimes they don’t have enough information,” she said, “about the effort that Mexico has made to reduce migration.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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