Mexico wraps itself in the national flag to unite against Trump

The most tense days in Mexican politics since Claudia Sheinbaum came to power have also become the most profitable for the president. The latest published polls show popular support at over 80%, and that was before people knew about the call Sheinbaum held with Donald Trump on Monday that led to a month-long suspension of the feared tariffs on Mexican exports. Mexico is closing ranks with its president against external threats from the United States that could seriously affect the economy, while laughing with her at the imposition of tariffs on Mexican products by Ecuador, a move that Sheinbaum dismissed with humor.

The business community, which cannot be described as a left-wing group in any country in the world, is a good gauge of the political climate in Mexico these days. The sector has welcomed the president’s success in her negotiations with her American counterpart, from whom she obtained a month-long suspension of tariffs on Mexican exports in exchange, for now, for a few symbolic gestures such sending 10,000 National Guard to the border, supposedly to combat fentanyl trafficking and the flow of migrants. But what Trump is really looking for is to reduce the intense consumption of Mexican products in his country: last year, the United States imported goods from Mexico worth over $466.6 billion.

Sheinbaum’s plan is for Mexican businesses to produce more for the domestic market, up to 50% of national supply and consumption, and increase by 15% what is manufactured for Mexico in sectors such as automotive, aerospace, electronic, semiconductor, pharmaceutical, or chemical. Made in Mexico and for Mexico, that is the request of Economy Secretary Marcelo Ebrard. On Tuesday, a similar petition was directed at cotton wool producers in a sector grateful to have another month without tariffs.

Statements by men like Claudio X. González, founder of Kimberly Clark Mexico, had to be read twice to make sure that they were not a mistake. The businessman assured, after the meeting with the president at the National Palace, that Sheinbaum’s “cool-headed” strategy is the way forward. “We are going to ensure that the treaty [the USMCA free trade agreement between the three North American countries] continues on good terms, there will be some turbulence along the way, but we should not be afraid because we have what it takes to move it forward,” he said. The same impulse of camaraderie marked the statements of other economic leaders such as Carlos Slim Domit, who was preparing to accelerate Sheinbaum’s Plan Mexico before Trump changes his mind and returns with the tariffs. Slim Domit’s father, the great Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim, has maintained good relations with Sheinbaum from the beginning, but Claudio X. González’s son, also of the same name, had been a bête noire for the previous government in Mexico.

Business leaders are preparing to move forward with the government’s economic document, which foresees investments of $277 billion by the end of the six-year presidential term and the creation of 1.5 million jobs to place the country among the top 10 economies in the world.

The opposition is also keeping a low profile. And if politicians and businessmen are in a good mood, Sheinbaum is proving even more successful among the general population, always inclined in Mexico to stand by its government and its flag in the face of foreign threats. Mexico has been independent for barely 200 years and is keen to defend its national sovereignty. The attack on the Mexican embassy in Ecuador in April of last year triggered an identical show of support for the government, then headed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador — whom Argentinean president Javier Milei called “ignorant” in March, which did not amuse Mexicans at all.

While the country celebrates or, at least, breathes a sigh of relief at the supposed triumph of politics over bravado, that is, the cautious handling by Sheinbaum and her team of the economic punishments promised by Trump, thousands of National Guard agents are already leaving for the northern border, the 1,954 miles that separate both countries and represents the Achilles heel of the bilateral relationship. To transfer the 10,000 promised uniformed officers, the effort is being distributed throughout the country: a few hundred from Campeche, others from Yucatán or Quintana Roo, or from the Valley of Mexico, where there are more guards or where there is less violence. Sheinbaum has sold the move as a “reorientation of forces” and she is not entirely wrong when she says that they are needed on the border, because it is a territory with a high crime rate and under pressure from migration in cities such as Ciudad Juárez, Matamoros or Tijuana, to cite a few examples. But in Mexico, crime is not lacking anywhere, and sometimes it is the police themselves who commit them.

Not only is an export frenzy expected this month, in case tariffs are really imposed later, but also gestures that will help visualize the efforts against drug trafficking, especially fentanyl, and a certain decline in the number of migrants who attempt to cross the controversial border in search of opportunities. The United States has been asked, in return, to rein in the massive sale of weapons with which the cartels supply themselves. But the real enemy, on the one hand, are the tariffs, and on the other, the large-scale import of cheaper products.

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