Mexico braced for the worst when President Trump threatened steep tariffs on its exports. But as a deadline looms, Mexico’s leaders hope they have found a formula for staving off tariffs by moving decisively on several fronts to appease Mr. Trump.
Focusing on Mr. Trump’s complaints over migration and illicit drugs, President Claudia Sheinbaum is deploying 10,000 troops to deter migrants from reaching the United States, building on efforts to break up migrant caravans and busing migrants to places far from the border.
Ms. Sheinbaum is also handing over to the United States dozens of top cartel operatives and accepting intelligence from C.I.A. drone flights to capture others. Breaking with her predecessor, who falsely claimed that Mexico did not manufacture fentanyl, she is unleashing a crackdown resulting in record seizures of the drug.
At the same time, Mexico’s leaders are imposing their own tariffs and restrictions on a wide range of Chinese imports, seeking to persuade Mr. Trump that Mexico, and its low-cost industrial base, can be a strategic partner to blunt China’s economic sway.
Mr. Trump is still vowing to impose 25 percent tariffs on Tuesday. But Mexico’s financial markets remain calm, reflecting expectations in the country’s business establishment that Ms. Sheinbaum can find a way to strike a deal.
“The way she’s been able to manage this crisis has been far superior than any other leader,” said Diego Marroquín Bitar, a scholar who specializes in North American trade at the Wilson Center, a Washington research group.
Mr. Trump praised Ms. Sheinbaum as a “marvelous woman” after speaking with her in February.
Ms. Sheinbaum has mixed her conciliatory public moves to appease Mr. Trump, such as deploying troops, with greater security cooperation behind the scenes and a modest dose of pushback against Mr. Trump on subjects like renaming the Gulf of Mexico.
It’s not an easy balancing act for Ms. Sheinbaum, even as her approval rating has soared to 80 percent. Skepticism of Mr. Trump’s xenophobic politics runs deep both in Mexican society and within Morena, Ms. Sheinbaum’s political party, which blends nationalist and leftist ideals.
After decades of integration, Mexico relies on trade with the United States more than any other major economy. Tariffs, even if imposed briefly, could deal a blow, economists warn.
Mr. Trump is also threatening separate 25 percent tariffs on global steel and aluminum imports, which would also affect Mexico. And the Trump administration is formulating additional “reciprocal” tariffs aimed at offsetting trade restrictions and matching the import duties charged by other countries.
The uncertainty over tariffs is already weighing on Mexico’s economy as companies put plans on hold. The central bank slashed its growth projection to 0.6 percent for this year from 1.2 percent.
Still, Mr. Trump’s repeated threats and subsequent pullback on those threats has nurtured hopes that tensions could ease. He initially vowed to impose the tariffs on his first day in office, but then backtracked twice.
Mexican negotiators are in Washington to meet with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, in a bid to reach a last-minute deal.
Here are three areas where Mexico is mobilizing to align with the Trump administration’s priorities.
Curbing Migration
Mexico’s pledge to send 10,000 additional National Guard members to the U.S. border was cited as a win by Mr. Trump in early February, when he paused imposing tariffs for 30 days.
For months, Mexico had already been dismantling migrant caravans well before they reached border cities and expanding a shadowy program that transported thousands of migrants to places deep in Mexico’s interior.
Mexico detained about 475,000 migrants in the last quarter of 2024, according to government figures, more than double the amount detained in the first nine months of the year.
The border was already exceptionally quiet before Mr. Trump took office in January, reflecting Mexico’s enforcement measures and the Biden administration’s asylum restrictions.
The Trump administration’s new efforts to choke off migration flows, along with Mexico’s troop deployment, are making it even harder for migrants to enter the United States.
Migrant crossings have dropped to once unthinkable levels. At one point in February, U.S. personnel on the Mexican border encountered only 200 migrants in a single day, the lowest such figure in recent history.
If the trend holds on an annualized basis, Border Patrol apprehensions could decline to levels last seen nearly 60 years ago around the end of the Johnson administration, according to Adam Isacson, a migration expert at the Washington Office on Latin America.
Mexico has sought to crack down on cartels producing illicit narcotics, especially fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that Mr. Trump has cited as the leading cause of overdose deaths in the United States.
Marking a break from past policies, when cartels managed to produce fentanyl with negligible interference from the authorities, Mexican officials have been announcing new seizures of fentanyl pills on a regular basis in recent weeks.
These moves include the capture last week of six kilos of fentanyl at Mexico City’s new international airport, in a package being sent to New Jersey. That followed the discovery of 18 kilograms of fentanyl hidden in a passenger bus in the northwestern border state of Sonora.
In December, shortly after Mr. Trump began threatening Mexico with tariffs, the authorities made a colossal seizure of 800 kilograms of fentanyl in Sinaloa state, Mexico’s largest capture of synthetic opioids.
In February, Mexican authorities in Puerto Vallarta also arrested two American citizens who faced arrest warrants in the United States for trafficking fentanyl. Both were extradited to Oklahoma.
Mexico followed up on Thursday by sending to the United States nearly 30 top cartel operatives wanted by American authorities, one of the largest such handovers in the history of the drug war.
The moves are aimed both at avoiding tariffs and military intervention by the United States, which Mr. Trump has threatened to take against drug cartels operating in Mexico.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Ms. Sheinbaum’s mentor and predecessor as president, had limited anti-narcotics cooperation with United States. Ms. Sheinbaum appears to be taking a different approach.
Greater enforcement could potentially contribute to reducing overdose deaths in the United States, which have already been on the decline.
In what could be a promising sign for Mexican negotiators seeking a deal on tariffs, overdose deaths fell about 24 percent in the 12-month period ending September 2024, compared to the same period the previous year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said.
Countering China
Trade between China and Mexico had been surging, fueling concerns that China could use its foothold in Mexico to gain greater access to U.S. markets. A year ago, shipping from China to Mexico was one of the world’s fastest growing trade routes.
But now Mexico is overhauling its ties with China, its second-largest trading partner. Just days after Mr. Trump first vowed to impose tariffs, the authorities raided a vast complex of stores in downtown Mexico City selling counterfeit Chinese goods.
Then Mexico imposed a 35 percent tariff on Chinese apparel imports, while also targeting Chinese online retailers like Shein and Temu by implementing a 19 percent tariff on goods imported through courier companies originating from China.
Still, with various tariff threats on the horizon, Mexico could do more to placate the Trump administration by moving to curb the import of products like semiconductors or automobiles, which are quickly making inroads in an important market for U.S. car manufacturers.
