Sheinbaum really needs her party to shut up

MXPE Weekly Essentials ft. import backdoor busted, diminishing returns in investments, and other highlights in Mexican politics, policy, and markets from the past week.

MXPE Weekly Essentials. Only the most important news in Mexican politics, policy, and markets from the past week.

This has been a tightrope of a diplomatic month for president Claudia Sheinbaum. Talks with the US have been intensifying to try to bring monthlong tariff and security tensions to an end. The climax will almost certainly come in the near future. Not only will Sheinbaum “most likely” meet with Donald Trump in this week’s G7 summit in Canada—where the danger of being ambushed by the US president is always a worry, Mexico is also planning for a visit from Secretary of State Marco Rubio. This one really is the high level meeting in which both countries will iron out the details of a long term deal.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau was in Mexico City to meet with Sheinbaum in what the president called a “courtesy visit” to plan for Rubio. Reuters instead claimed Landau was in town to pressure Mexico to tackle corrupt politicians working within the government’s own ranks. Both the US and Mexican government vehemently denied this. There is no doubt though that with border security, fentanyl, taxes on remittances, tariffs, and broader make or break talks on the table, that this is crunch time.

So Mexico’s president must have been pulling out her hair this week as her party, Morena, went up in a blaze of anti-US rhetoric.