Sheinbaum’s foreign fan club is stuck on sound bites
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum this week in Mexico City. Image credit: President of Mexico / Alamy.
by David Agren, writer-at-large.
President Claudia Sheinbaum responded to US President Donald Trump’s ongoing threats of 25 per cent tariffs on Mexico and Canada with a familiar, if verbose script. The president often adopts an indignant tone and points the finger back at the US – such as accusing its officials of allowing guns to flow into Mexico or saying, much as her predecessor AMLO did, that the US has a fentanyl problem because parents don’t take care of their children (unlike Mexico).
She offers some rhetorical flourishes appealing to Mexican nationalism, too, voicing the same bromides as AMLO. “Mexico is not a colony,” and “Mexico is respected,” to cite two. Ultimately, though, she promises to continue dialogue the United States.
The strategy has served Sheinbaum well at home and abroad. The Mexican president boasts an 81% approval rating, according to the newspaper El Financiero. Her calm, dry and matronly tones – spoken endlessly at her daily press conference – have reassured the population amid Trump’s threats, while a docile opposition and business sector keep criticisms in-check .
Her willingness to bite back at Trump has won her fans, too, addled by her nationalistic bromides, recycled comments on Mexican societal and cultural superiority to the United States and adroit humour. Moments of levity, such as pulling out an old map to show territory in what’s now the western U.S. with the name “Mexican America” won her international attention.
At times, the response is more schoolyard than sophisticated. Adopting the Trump and AMLO tactic of saying (in so many words): “I know you are, but what am I?” gained her an audience in Canada, after she insisted it had a fentanyl problem – while steadfastly denying it’s an issue at home.
Her image has soared among the U.S. president’s detractors, ranging from anti-imperial types to the Trump resistance. Even level headed commentators have come away impressed. “Only the president of Mexico knows how to deal with emperor Trump,” wrote Santiago Ramos, editor of the recommended Substack, Wisdom of Crowds. Ramos cited Sheinbaum’s repeated use of the words, “cabeza fría”, cool head.
“She wasn’t preening, nor did she adopt the posture of a scandalized Global South subaltern,” Ramos wrote, mentioning Sheinbaum’s response to the Gulf of America name change. “Then she moved on to other affairs of state. No long, indulgent speechifying for her. Leave that to Maduro – or Trump. Cabeza fría.”
Ramos, like many observers, fails to grasp the role of the daily morning press conference in the “Fourth Transformation” – as AMLO and Sheinbaum call his political project, an aggrandizement that puts it on the same historical level as Mexico independence and the Revolution of 1910. The mañanera is something that can be called “affairs of state” for Sheinbaum. It’s ostensibly to inform the population and provide “transparency.” But it's mainly a forum for sending political communications, trolling the opposition and talking endlessly on topics which could be addressed briefly. (In other words: gaslighting.)
In the age of the second Trump, the mañanera is becoming important for foreigners. Sheinbaum’s sound bites have gone global. So are incomplete analyses of her actions – fashioned to show Trump getting played by a savvier opponent.
Mexico’s deal to postpone tariffs for 30 days included a promise to send 10,000 National Guard members to the northern border to stop US-bound drugs, especially fentanyl. Sheinbaum said the US will act on southbound weapons. Critics correctly pointed out that the deal largely resembled a 2019 deal, in which Mexico avoided tariffs by sending the National Guard to the northern and southern borders to stop migrants. Another criticism claimed Mexico already had 15,000 troops near the border – something standard for the National Defence Secretariat. But troops started deploying from interior states immediately afterward, raising questions about maintaining security in other parts of Mexico.
Largely missed by Sheinbaum’s new foreign fans – and those describing her press conference as “affairs of state – was her artful dodge for avoiding Trump’s explosive accusation of the government of Mexico maintaining an “intolerable alliance” with drug cartels. At her press conference, Sheinbaum showed a White House tweet, which included a screenshot of an AP story on the conviction of former public security secretary Genero García Luna – who left office with AMLO’s political nemesis, former president Felipe Calderón in 2012 – as dispositive of cartel collusion being in the past.
Her foreign fans also missed her support for Trump pulling the plug on USAID, which funded independent journalism in Mexico that AMLO came to dislike. They probably didn’t pay attention to her not inviting the president of the Supreme Court to the annual Constitution Day ceremony – which comes after her party carried out a judicial overhaul to fire all judges and select their replacements through elections.
They also probably missed her partisans in Morelos state swinging into action to save former governor Cuauhtémoc Blanco from sexual abuse accusations by impeaching the state prosecutor. (Blanco also has battled claims of cartel collusion; he denies the accusations.)
Sheinbaum has skillfully handled Trump’s threats. Partly because she has political capital as a popular president. But also because she appears to be quietly cooperating with Trump’s demands. Few in Mexico fault her for that. But her foreign fans seem largely stuck on some sound bites.