Threat of US military intervention overshadows Trump and Sheinbaum’s first meeting

In the year since Donald Trump returned to office, there hasn’t been a single face-to-face meeting between the U.S. president and the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum. Neither the trade war, nor immigration policy, nor even the specter of the fentanyl crisis or the security agenda have led to a meeting between the two leaders.

In the end, it is soccer — the draw for next year’s World Cup — that will bring the neighboring leaders together for their first face-to-face meeting. On Friday, Sheinbaum will hold a brief three-way meeting with Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. The meeting comes at a delicate moment in bilateral relations, which have been tense since Trump’s return to the White House. The U.S. president has constantly criticized Mexico, and even raised the possibility of a military intervention in Mexican territory to combat organized crime. This threat has put Mexican authorities on edge and tested the limits of the relationship between the two North American partners.

After nearly two dozen calls, letters, and a handful of allusions and veiled references, Sheinbaum and Trump will finally meet face-to-face this Friday. The review of the free trade agreement with the United States and Canada (USMCA) will also be on the agenda, as Sheinbaum herself announced. At Thursday’s morning press conference, she reiterated that “Mexico defends its sovereignty. We have an understanding: non-intervention, cooperation without subordination, and the sovereignty of our territories.”

Sheinbaum’s response to Trump’s attacks has been firm. Mexico will accept the exchange of intelligence information, as has been happening for months, but that in no way implies opening the door to U.S. operations on Mexican soil. “It’s not that we don’t want support, but not with foreign troops,” the president recently said, while recalling that the last time the United States intervened in Mexico, it annexed half of the country.

Since his election campaign and subsequent return to the White House, Trump has stubbornly relied on the narrative that Mexico is not doing enough to control the drug-related violence and the massive influx of drugs — especially fentanyl, which has become a public health crisis in the U.S. Based on this rhetoric, Trump declared Mexican cartels to be terrorist organizations, which authorizes him to intervene on foreign soil, a situation similar to that faced by other countries, primarily Venezuela.

Trump’s approach — which far from being a fringe position has been embraced by hard-line Republicans, who want tougher action on Mexico — represents a major challenge to its southern neighbor. In a country where nationalist rhetoric remains central for all political parties, this external pressure forces the government to respond firmly to avoid the perception of weakness.

Sheinbaum has even gone so far as to extradite more than 50 organized crime leaders to Washington in two separate transfers, a decision she defended as “sovereign.” Ahead of Friday’s meeting with Trump, The Wall Street Journal, citing sources from both governments, reported that another point of discussion would be a third transfer of drug lords from Mexican prisons to U.S. facilities.

The internal political climate in Mexico adds another layer of complexity. In recent weeks, far-right sectors with clear ties to the MAGA movement have attempted to capitalize on social discontent. The recent protests against President Sheinbaum, organized by Generation Z, have amplified U.S. rhetoric advocating for more forceful action. These political currents, still minor, have resonated with international actors aligned with the MAGA agenda, who are interested in portraying Mexico as a failed state requiring external intervention. While they do not represent the dominant position in Mexican politics, their presence has helped to further polarize the public debate.

Economic issues are also contributing to the strain in relations. Since the start of Trump’s second term, the magnate has shaken the bilateral relationship by announcing the implementation of new tariffs for Mexico, which has increased uncertainty about the country’s economic future. The Republican has imposed 25% tariffs on all products not included in the USMCA agreement (which he aims to renegotiate), 25% tariffs on automobiles, and 50% tariffs on steel, aluminum, and copper.

The USMCA has become the central issue in the current bilateral tension. For three decades, Mexico, the United States, and Canada have consolidated North America as a major economic bloc through trade liberalization. It was Donald Trump himself who, in 2018, pushed for the renegotiation of the agreement and called on his partners to redesign it. Now, with a review looming, Trump is once again putting the treaty into question: he has suggested abandoning the USMCA and replacing it with independent bilateral deals.

This will be one of the challenges Mexico faces in its meetings with its northern neighbor. Since Trump’s return, Washington has followed a strategy of negotiating everything at once, using its position of power to trade one concession for another. Tariff increases, for example, have been used as punishment for supposedly insufficient efforts to control drug trafficking or migration.

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