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The President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum has clarified her conversation with US President-elect Donald Trump, after the two leaders offered differing accounts of the call.
After the call on Wednesday, Nov. 27, Trump said Sheinbaum had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border”.
But Sheinbaum reacted, saying she made no such promises, rather she had merely reiterated Mexico’s position, which she said was “not to close borders but to build bridges between governments and people”.
The call followed Trump’s announcement on Monday, Nov. 25, that, upon taking office in January, he would slap an across-the-board tariff of 25% on Mexico and Canada, and a 10% tariff on China.
Trump said the import duties on Mexico and Canada would only be removed once illegal immigration and drug trafficking to the US had stopped.
Initially, Trump’s announcement elicited a combative response from President Sheinbaum, who vowed earlier on Wednesday, Nov. 27, to retaliate if the US triggered a trade war.
“If there are US tariffs, Mexico would also raise tariffs,” she said of the proposed duties, which appear to breach the USMCA trade deal that Trump himself struck in 2018 during his first presidency between the US, Mexico and Canada.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Nov. 28, after their call, the Mexican president said she did not specifically discuss tariffs in the phone call with Trump but that they had addressed immigration and fentanyl trafficking – the reasons Trump had named for imposing the tariffs in the first place.
She said she had reassured him that a migrant caravan he had expressed concern about was “not going to reach the [northern] Mexican frontier” with the US but she stressed that “it has never been our plan to close the border with the US”.
Sheinbaum insisted that the conversation had been “very amiable” and that they had agreed they would “continue with our talks”.
Mellowing down on her initial reaction to Trump’s import tax announcement, she also insisted there was now “no possibility of a tariff war” between Mexico and the US.
