Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has hit back at Donald Trump’s “slanderous” claim that her government had joined forces with drug bosses, amid anger and incredulity at the US president’s attack on the leaders of Latin America’s second biggest economy.
Trump made the claim on Saturday as he announced 25% tariffs against Mexico that the US said were a response to illegal immigration and the “intolerable alliance” between drug trafficking organisations and Mexico’s government, which had allegedly offered safe haven to “dangerous cartels”.
Trump’s decision to follow through on his tariffs threat – coupled with the dramatic accusation against Sheinbaum’s administration – drew a stinging response from Mexico’s first female president, who took power last October.
“We categorically reject the White House’s slanderous claim that the Mexico government has alliances with criminal organisations, as well as any attempt to intervene in our territory,” Sheinbaum wrote on X. “If there is anywhere that such an alliance in fact exists, it is in the United States gun factories that sell high-powered weapons to these criminal groups.”
On Sunday the governors of Mexico’s 31 states and Mexico City backed Sheinbaum in a joint statement signed by politicians from across the political spectrum. “We energetically condemn the accusations that suggest there is a link between our government and narco-trafficking cartels,” it said. “These claims are not only baseless, they also ignore the major, verifiable efforts Mexico has made to combat organised crime.”
Mexican media reports suggested Sheinbaum’s administration had been bracing for Trump’s tariffs – which were also imposed on Canada and China – and had prepared a series of countermeasures with which to respond. But the US’s explicit claim that Mexico’s government had allied itself with narco-trafficking groups – which one pundit called “Trump’s missile” – appeared to have blindsided officials. “What had appeared to be a commercial and economic crisis has become an eminently political issue,” the newspaper El Universal said.
Mexican front pages were covered with references to Trump’s “narco-government” claim on Sunday. An indignant headline in the leftwing paper La Jornada said: “Mexico demands RESPECT! after Trump attack”. A cartoon depicted Trump as a caveman clutching a cudgel emblazoned with the word “tariffs”.
Mexico’s economy minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said on social media that Trump was “shooting himself in the foot”. He wrote: “Accusing the Mexican government of being an ally of narco [traffickers] is – apart from an insult to our country – a pretext to distract US public opinion from the tremendous mistake of imposing disruptive tariffs on Mexico and North American companies that operate here.”
Ebrard retweeted a post by Lawrence Summers in which the former US treasury secretary called Trump’s tariffs “inexplicable and dangerous”.
Summers wrote: “It is hard to imagine a better way to increase migration on our southern border than by destabilizing the Mexican economy, as these tariffs set out to do.” He said the tariffs would “force our allies to retaliate. And I presume they will retaliate in ways that are designed to maximize our economic pain.”
