MXPE Weekly Essentials

Understanding Mexico’s Trump strategy, a Mexican migrant trap, Sheinbaum’s elite business team, and other highlights in Mexican politics, policy, and markets from the past week.

Mexico watchers in North America must do better. As Canada threatened Mexico with exclusion from the USMCA, and the US threatened both with tariffs if they didn’t control migration and drug flows, attention invariably switched to how president Claudia Sheinbaum was taking steps to make things right.

For the Canadians, it was coverage about how Mexico had suddenly whirred into action to stop Chinese imports. For president-elect Trump it was a call in which he claimed Sheinbaum had agreed to migratory measures that would be “effectively closing our Southern Border.”

Much like the ensuing tug-of-war between Trump and Sheinbaum over what “closing the border” actually meant, interpretations about how Mexico is bowing to its partners’ will misunderstands what has happened.

Mexico benefits if the US and Canada think it's doing everything it can to please them. But readers of The Mexico Political Economist will have already seen that these policies have been in the process of being rolled out for months now.