Mexico Managed to Stave Off Trump’s Tariffs. Now What?

To broad aid throughout her nation, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico introduced on Monday that she had forestalled a plan by the Trump administration to impose 25 % tariffs on Mexican items. Initially set to enter impact on the stroke of midnight, the tariffs have been delayed by a month, she stated.

“We now have this month to work, to persuade one another that that is one of the simplest ways ahead,” Ms. Sheinbaum stated at her common morning information convention after talking to President Trump. Suggesting that she may have the option maintain off the penalties altogether, she stated she had advised her American counterpart: “We’re going to ship outcomes. Good outcomes in your individuals, good outcomes for the Mexican individuals.”

The announcement was seen as a victory for the Mexican authorities in coping with Mr. Trump, who has set a brand new tone of aggression within the first weeks of his presidency. He has demanded that even a number of the United States’ closest allies acquiesce to his calls for or face penalties within the type of tariffs or maybe even navy power.

The deal, nonetheless, will power Mexico right into a essential 30-day check throughout which it should not solely proceed its latest progress but additionally make nonetheless extra headway on two of the nation’s most enduring challenges: drug trafficking and migration.

Underneath the phrases of the settlement, Mexico will put up an extra 10,000 Mexican Nationwide Guardsmen on the border. In return, Ms. Sheinbaum stated, the U.S. authorities will work to cease the move of arms into Mexico.

In his personal assertion, Mr. Trump made no point out of a promise to assist curb firearms trafficking, however he celebrated the deployment of Mexican troops.

Whereas Mexico has spent the previous yr stepping up its immigration enforcement, which has already contributed to a drastic discount in U.S. border crossings, the problem of drug trafficking is rather more sophisticated. It’s going to require Mexico to have “a really clear, very well-defined plan,” stated Ildefonso Guajardo, a former financial system minister who negotiated with the primary Trump administration.

Mr. Trump and Thomas Homan, the administration’s border czar, have repeatedly laid blame for the fentanyl overdose disaster in america on Mexican cartels in addition to on migrants they are saying transfer the drug throughout the border. Mr. Homan falsely advised Fox Information that Mexican cartels had “killed 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 Individuals with fentanyl.”

Since 2019, Mexico has displaced China as the largest provider of fentanyl to america. In addition to being terribly potent, the drug may be very simple to make — and even simpler to smuggle throughout the border, hidden underneath garments or in glove compartments. Based on U.S. prosecutors, the Sinaloa Cartel spends solely $800 on chemical substances to supply a kilo that may internet a revenue of as much as $640,000 in america.

Mexico has been the supply of virtually all the fentanyl seized by U.S. legislation enforcement in recent times, and the quantity crossing the border has elevated tenfold prior to now 5 years. However federal knowledge exhibits it’s introduced in not by migrants however by Americans recruited by cartel organizations. Greater than 80 % of the individuals who have been sentenced for fentanyl trafficking on the southern border are U.S. residents.

“All that makes it extremely tougher to go after and management the market,” stated Jaime López-Aranda, a safety analyst primarily based in Mexico Metropolis.

Ms. Sheinbaum’s administration has already stepped up efforts to fight fentanyl since she took workplace in October, together with the most important seizure of the drug — about 20 million doses — ever recorded in Mexico. Safety forces commonly report advances on arrests and dismantled drug-production labs.

However consultants query how a lot of a dent these efforts actually signify. “Mexico can maintain finishing up symbolic actions prefer it has been doing currently,” Mr. López-Aranda stated, “however there’s little extra it could actually do.”

Waging a full struggle on the cartels would possible backfire and set off extra waves of violence throughout Mexico, analysts say. The nation has skilled these penalties earlier than.

Upon taking workplace in 2006, President Felipe Calderón declared a struggle on felony teams. The concept was to eradicate them and loosen their grip on the nation. However concentrating on cartel leaders and interesting in direct confrontations solely led to those teams splintering into extra violent, brutal cells, resulting in certainly one of Mexico’s bloodiest intervals.

“What’s even going to occur after we destroy all of the labs?” stated Mr. Guajardo. “These guys are simply going to focus extra on extortion, theft and killings. Mexico can be left to cope with the issue alone.”

Underneath the settlement introduced on Monday, Mexico can even bolster safety forces on the border. Not like america, Mexico doesn’t have a particular safety power devoted to patrolling the border, as a substitute counting on a mixture of the navy and Nationwide Guard.

Specialists questioned how efficient a deployment of 10,000 extra troops can be at delivering Mexico’s promised outcomes when it got here to fentanyl.

“Ten thousand members maybe seems like quite a bit, nevertheless it’s all within the particulars,” stated Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, a drug coverage researcher on the Institute on International Battle and Cooperation at U.C. San Diego. “For those who’re solely going to have them on the border, that doesn’t deal with all the fentanyl manufacturing chain.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow on the American Immigration Council, famous that that is the third time in six years that Mexico has dedicated to sending a big deployment of Nationwide Guard to the U.S. border.

Whereas Mexico’s forces will “attempt to obtain outcomes in any respect prices,” a more practical technique can be to have officers from each international locations share extra intelligence and knowledge to cease the move of medicine, stated Jonathan Maza, a Mexican-based safety analyst.

The shortage of cooperation was one thing that American officers complained about throughout the administration of Ms. Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Given the significance to Mexico of avoiding tariffs, Mr. Maza, stated the Nationwide Guard might obtain leads to the quick and medium time period. However, he warned, felony teams are prone to adapt.

On curbing migration and unlawful crossings on the border, Mexico might have a extra simple path to success, having adopted a number of efficient measures within the final yr.

Nationwide Guard troops are deployed to immigration checkpoints from north to south, and migration officers have additionally instituted a coverage of “decompression” during which migrants are bused from concentrated areas within the north farther south to maintain strain off the border. The Mexican authorities have used busing every now and then for years, however its growth in 2024 highlighted the nation’s toughening insurance policies on migration.

Breaking apart migrant caravans headed for america is one other step Mexican officers have taken in recent times. When a number of emerged within the weeks main as much as Mr. Trump taking workplace, they had been all disbanded.

Mexico’s more durable stance, paired with President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s govt order final summer season to primarily forestall undocumented migrants from receiving asylum on the border, contributed to a dramatic discount in unlawful immigration on the border in 2024. In December, U.S. Border Patrol officers recorded solely 47,326 unlawful crossings — a pointy drop from the file 249,740 documented a yr earlier.

The Mexican authorities have additionally launched bureaucratic hurdles for migrants and asylum seekers.

“Mexico’s technique has exhausted and worn down migrants,” stated Mauro Pérez Bravo, the previous head of the Nationwide Migration Institute’s citizen council, which evaluates the nation’s migration insurance policies. “What it did was to emotionally and bodily drain individuals to maintain them from attending to america.”

In change for deploying troops to the border and stemming the move of fentanyl and migrants into america, Ms. Sheinbaum stated she secured Mr. Trump’s settlement to do extra to forestall American-manufactured firearms from coming into Mexico.

“These high-powered weapons that arrive illegally arm the felony teams and provides them firepower,” she stated.

This isn’t the primary time that Mexico has made that argument.

In 2021, the nation sued a number of gun makers and one distributor, blaming them for the devastating, decades-long bloodshed from which Mexico has struggled to get better. The U.S. Supreme Court docket will determine this yr whether or not Mexico might sue gun producers in america. A latest evaluation confirmed that just about 9,000 gun sellers function throughout cities in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

However in his personal remarks, Mr. Trump didn’t make any point out of Ms. Sheinbaum’s request. It’s unclear how his administration may really fulfill such a dedication and what, if something, Mexico would do ought to it fail to take action.

James Wagner, Paulina Villegas and Simon Romero contributed reporting.