SEATTLE - Ever since winning the U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump and his team have doubled-down on their anti-immigrant plans for when he takes office on January 20. Besides promising to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in the country's history, Trump has threatened key trade partners such as Mexico with tariffs if they fail to control the flow of undocumented immigrants trying to enter the U.S. through its Southern border.
Although the president-elect has not shown signs of budging his anti-immigrant stance nor dissipated the threat of imposing tariffs on Mexican goods, Mexico's new president suggests that the biggest negative impact of Trump's proposed mass deportations will not be felt in Mexico, but in the U.S. instead.
"Regarding what's been said about deportations -- who will have the biggest problems?" Claudia Sheinbaum asked rhetorically during a press conference. "Well, the United States," she said.
Although some experts have warned that tariffs would cause Mexico to enter a recession, others caution that U.S. consumers and companies would feel the impact as well. Mexico and the U.S. sustain one of the largest trading partnerships in the world, with bilateral trade hitting $855 billion in 2022, per data from the U.S. Trade Representative's Office.
And although Trump's proposed tariffs could be as high as 100% and impact both country's economies, Sheinbaum believes a high-level of dialogue between both governments must exist if they want to coordinate on issues important to both administrations.
"Everyone who says that we're taking the arrival of President Trump lightly, we're always going to be positive with the idea that there will be a good relationship," she said.
Sheinbaum, who was sworn in as Mexico's new president in October, described her initial calls with Trump as cordial "They haven't said anything negative related to the proposals we're making," Sheinbaum said. "We're going to at some point present to President Trump a humanistic proposal," she added, emphasizing that the proposal will reduce immigration and attend to the root causes of why people are being pushed out of their home countries.
Sheinbaum, who replaced Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) in October, is following in the footsteps of her predecessor who also emphasized pro-migrant rhetoric but nevertheless worked closely with the Trump and Biden administrations to increase measures aimed at stopping migrants from reaching the U.S.-Mexico border.
But besides the tariffs and mass-deportation threats, Mexico would also have to worry about the money generated by remittances sent from the U.S. in case Trump carries out with his plans.
With an estimated total of $65 billion in 2024, remittances are one of Mexico's largest source of foreign currency as around half of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are Mexican nationals.
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