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Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum charms bitter Trump into silence & tariff softening

Claudia Sheinbaum at a media conference in Mexico on March 6.

With a trade war brewing, President Donald Trump gave the Mexican President a sign of grudging respect: “You’re tough,” he told her in a phone call last month, according to four people with knowledge of the exchange.

By their most recent conversation, the two leaders were trading compliments and carving out a reprieve from some tariffs in real time, the people familiar with the call said.

When Claudia Sheinbaum became President on October 1, the first woman to ever govern Mexico, there were doubts about how she would handle the relationship with the US, especially if Trump won the election.

A proud Leftist and a scientist by training, Sheinbaum had little foreign policy experience in her previous post as mayor of Mexico City. Unlike her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who got along with Trump and shared his bombastic style, Sheinbaum was seen more as a reserved technocrat than a political show woman.

But she has surprised many in her country not only by fending off a barrage of threats from Trump, but also by forging, somewhat improbably, a relationship of budding public respect with her American counterpart.

“Nobody expected her to be this good, or this lucky,” said Carlos Bravo Regidor, a Mexican political analyst. “Whatever it is, it’s working.”

On the campaign trail, Trump made Mexico a clear target of his attacks. Once elected, he vowed to impose tariffs on America’s southern neighbour until fentanyl stopped flowing into the US.

Yet lately, he has been lavishing praise on Sheinbaum, even as he excoriates more seasoned world leaders. He’s called her “a wonderful woman” with whom he has a “very good” relationship.

Her calm demeanour and the results she’s delivered on migration and fentanyl seem to have won his respect, officials from both countries say, impressing key members of his administration, including deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who has oversight of domestic policy and is a homeland security adviser.

Her rapport with the American President is helped in part by the contrast with Trump’s much more contentious relationship with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, who is leaving the post on Friday.

At the start of their most recent conversation last week, Sheinbaum spent about five minutes ticking through everything she had done to secure the border and fight fentanyl trafficking, according to two people familiar with the talks. Ahead of the call, she had sent Trump data to back up her points. She suggested that the tariffs would only make it harder for her to explain this level of cooperation to her citizens.

Trump stayed silent for a long beat after she stopped talking — and then, after complimenting Sheinbaum, abruptly launched into an attack on Canada, the people said. He asked what Sheinbaum thought of Trudeau. She said she didn’t talk much with the Canadian leader. Trump said she was lucky.

At the end of the call, the people said, Trump offered to exclude many Mexican goods from tariffs and then started dictating, out loud, a Truth Social post announcing the deal. Sheinbaum and her team were elated.

Trump posted that he was delaying tariffs until April 2 “out of respect” for the Mexican President, adding: “Thank you to President Sheinbaum for your hard work and cooperation!” Sheinbaum said the call was “excellent and respectful” in a post on X.

She has also made bold moves against drug cartels known for exacting revenge on those who threaten them. Perhaps the most drastic: the transfer of 29 drug lords to the US to face criminal charges in late February. That move was a colossal blow to organised criminal groups and sent a message that Sheinbaum was serious about combating them.

Soon after the handover, Sheinbaum’s cellphone was hacked, according to several people familiar with the matter. A spokesman for the Mexican presidency declined to comment.

While cooperating intensely with Trump, Sheinbaum has also drummed up nationalist sentiment at home, reminding Mexicans that the country is “not a colony of anyone”, and repeating some version of the phrase “coordination, yes; submission, never”.

In recent months, her approval ratings in Mexico have rocketed above 75 per cent.

Still, despite Sheinbaum’s efforts, Mexico hasn’t been shielded from Trump’s unpredictability. Like the rest of the world, the country awaits another round of potential tariffs on April 2.

Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum addresses supporters during an event to give details on the country's response to U.S. President Donald Trump's 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico, including retaliato

Mexico is also contending with steel and aluminum tariffs imposed this week, as well as duties on goods not included in the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which were about half of the country’s US exports last year, according to a White House official not authorised to speak publicly. The trade disruptions have already rattled the Mexican economy.

But as Trump continues to hammer Canada with new threats of steep levies and annexation, Mexicans are mostly enjoying a break from the drama — at least for now.

“This is like a real-life episode of The Apprentice,” said Bravo Regidor, referring to the 2000s reality series starring Trump.

“The purpose of the whole show is to survive until the next episode, and she has been able to do that so far.”

The two leaders have come a long way in just a few months.

Trump has charged that Mexico is run by cartels and threatened military strikes on Mexican soil. And while Trump often publicly said he had a terrific relationship with Sheinbaum’s predecessor and mentor, López Obrador, he also harboured concerns about the former Mexican leader’s management of cartel violence.

Trump and some key members of his team were initially sceptical of Sheinbaum, two people familiar with his thinking said, in part because of media coverage that portrayed her as an ideologically committed Leftist.

Early on, her rhetoric towards Trump was at times adversarial.

At a news conference in November, she read aloud a sharply worded letter she had written to Trump responding to his threat of tariffs. “For every tariff, there will be a response in kind, until we put at risk our shared enterprises,” she said.

The missive was viewed by some members of Trump’s transition team as scolding and an unnecessary provocation, according to five people familiar with their thinking.

Then, in early January, after Trump said he would rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, Sheinbaum joked that the US be renamed “Mexican America”.

The comments were widely interpreted as poking fun at Trump.

But her style started to shift as some of her advisers began hearing that confrontational tactics would only anger Trump.

She won points by deciding to speak to Trump in English on their calls, three people familiar with talks said. López Obrador spoke to Trump in Spanish, through an interpreter, and talked for such a long time that he often bored the president, officials said.

By contrast, Sheinbaum has come to her conversations with the President extremely prepared, three US and Mexican officials said. She has studied his speeches, watching the videos, to try to understand Trump’s communication style.

Her tone with him has been calm, and she has come across to officials as serious and transparent. That even-keeled approach has made an impression particularly because it’s so different from that of Trudeau, who has had more contentious exchanges with Trump.

Mexico observers pointed to the escalating spat between the US and Canada as a sign that perhaps Sheinbaum’s lighter touch with Trump has shielded the country from further disruptions.

“She has been dignified and discreet in not picking a fight,” said Enrique Krauze, a prominent Mexican historian. “Her natural characteristics have worked well, for now, in the face of a personality like Trump.”

New York Times News Service