With U.S. tariff threats looming, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum convened a rally in the Zócalo, the massive public square in the center of Mexico City, on March 9, where she planned to announce her response. The Zócalo has served as the seat of Mexico’s power since Aztec times and has been used by presidents as a platform for projecting authority to the nation and beyond.
Like her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador did before her, Ms. Sheinbaum continues the tradition. The political party of the two consecutive presidents, the National Regeneration Movement, known by its Spanish acronym Morena, often buses in loyalists and government workers from all corners of the country for these rallies.
Ms. Sheinbaum called for national unity at this assembly, even as she took potshots at Mexican opposition parties. She only twice mentioned the person whose threats she was responding to: U.S. President Donald Trump, who had threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports. Twice so far Mr. Trump has granted temporary reprieves on the tariffs.
“The unity of the country is very important. It’s the only way to confront one of the world’s greatest powers,” Ms. Sheinbaum told a sea of supporters—estimated at 350,000 people, according to the Morena-led Mexico City government.
The Mexican bishops’ conference has heeded the president’s call for unity. It released a video on social media after the rally in which various bishops read from a statement congratulating Ms. Sheinbaum, who took office Oct. 1.
“We Mexicans are called to work together in the face of adversity, summoned by our different political authorities, starting with the president’s office, to overcome division and social confrontation, to continue with the dialogues in the construction of peace, to promote greater investments for economic development with better working conditions,” the statement said.
The repeated taunts and threats from the U.S. president had been notable in his early weeks in office, yet Ms. Sheinbaum spoke often of “respect,” using the word 11 times in her address to the crowd.
Citing a “respectful” phone conversation with Mr. Trump just four days before the Zócalo rally, Ms. Sheinbaum said, “In the relationship with the United States, with its government, dialogue and respect prevailed.”
Indeed, after her phone call, Mr. Trump granted a pause of the proposed tariffs, exempting until April 2 imports from Mexico that are compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement he signed during his first term. That positive outcome prompted Ms. Sheinbaum to recast the rally in the Zócalo as a “celebration” rather than a show of national resistance.
“I am sure that with information and respectful dialogue we can always achieve a respectful relationship. It has been like this so far,” Ms. Sheinbaum told the crowd. “We are neighbors. We have the responsibility to collaborate and coordinate, [but] we cannot cede our sovereignty nor can our people be affected by decisions made by foreign governments or hegemons.”
On March 26, Mr. Trump announced his intention to proceed with a 25 percent tariff on cars manufactured outside the United States, a direct hit on Mexico's burgeoning car manufacturing business. In keeping with her previous approach, Ms. Sheinbaum did not immediately respond to this latest trade provocation.
But so far Ms. Sheinbaum has deftly handled Mr. Trump, even developing an unlikely relationship with her U.S. counterpart. Mr. Trump has expressed admiration for her and has spared Mexico many of the discourtesies expressed during his first run for office in 2016. Mr. Trump said on his Truth Social account that he paused tariffs out of “respect” for Ms. Sheinbaum.
He told reporters, “President Sheinbaum is a woman I like very much.”
He extended the same reprieve that week to Canada, but only after making Canadians sweat a few more hours and only after a far less pleasant phone call with then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau—whom Trump belittled as “governor” amid threats to annex Canada. That conversation descended into shouting, according to media reports.
A rally effect in Mexico
The New York Times reported that in her far more agreeable conversation Ms. Sheinbaum presented updates to Mr. Trump on everything Mexico was doing to halt migrants and fentanyl heading north.
“You’re tough,” Mr. Trump reportedly told her.
Her deft handling of the mercurial U.S. president has sent her approval rating soaring, reaching 85 percent in the latest survey from the newspaper El Financiero.
“Polls show a rise in Sheinbaum’s approval among opposition supporters, demonstrating a rally effect, that is, a closing of ranks around her leadership,” poll director Alejandro Moreno said in an editorial. “Sheinbaum had more room to maneuver to negotiate or to have a much more cautious and moderate reaction.” The Mexican president had refrained from responding to Mr. Trump’s provocation, calling a rally instead of immediately responding as Mr. Trudeau had done, said Javier Garza, a journalist and political analyst in the city of Torreón.
Her daily media presentations have drawn rave reviews from partisans, exasperation from critics—whom she routinely trolls and attacks—and worldwide attention because of her skill in pushing back without somehow raising Mr. Trump’s ire. “Mexico is a free, sovereign and independent country,” she often reminds her counterpart.
Sometimes she even points to shortcomings in U.S. society, like its rates of fentanyl addiction, while describing Mexico as a “cultural power” with strong families that keep addictions and fentanyl abuse at bay. (Her predecessor, Mr. López Obrador, had scrapped the national addictions survey, however, leaving Mexico’s actual fentanyl problem poorly understood.)
She also pushes back against the preferred narrative in the United States, focusing not on immigrants or drugs heading north but the scourge of U.S. guns crossing into Mexico and arming drug cartels.
Ms. Sheinbaum has lightly taken issue with Mr. Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico—at one press conference humorously presenting an old map demarcating “Mexican America” for territory now part of the United States. She reserved her sharpest criticism on the matter for Google after the tech company revised its maps to obliterate the “Gulf of Mexico,” replacing it with Mr. Trump’s preferred “Gulf of America.”
Ms. Sheinbaum has avoided directly criticizing Mr. Trump and his administration when asked about a possible U.S. military intervention in Mexico in a hunt for drug cartel leaders—even while objecting to statements from Mr. Trump’s nominee for Mexico ambassador, Ronald Johnson.
“Despite Mexico yielding to all U.S. demands—an unavoidable reality given the structural asymmetry of the bilateral relationship—the prevailing narrative has been one of defending the homeland and sovereignty,” Alexia Bautista, a former Mexican diplomat and senior analyst for Mexico at the consulting group Horizon Engage, wrote in the newspaper El Economista. “Mexico has even stated that it will continue to cooperate with Washington for ‘humanitarian’ reasons. A remarkable narrative, as if the country had no other option.”
Unlike in Canada, where individual provincial premiers have tried negotiating with or threatening the United States as its undeclared trade war escalates, Ms. Sheinbaum speaks as the sole voice of her nation. Her Morena party and its allies hold large majorities in Congress, the opposition remains cowed and discredited, and the business sector prefers not to talk out of turn, according to analysts.
The bishops’ statement was originally published on Feb. 24, but it was re-released after the rally as “proof that [the bishops] support her” and to say that “we are here with you” as the country rallies around the flag, said Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez, a Mexican sociologist studying the Catholic Church.
In their statement, the Mexican bishops expressed misgivings over Mr. Trump’s agenda. “We cannot help but consider that the policy of the new president of the United States of America towards Mexico in particular, and towards the world in general, is worrying,” the bishops said.
“It is clear that his goal is to pressure our country to achieve very specific goals in his government plans: combating organized crime related to drug trafficking, addressing the immigration issue, and overcoming the disadvantages in economic relations between the two countries that, according to his criteria, are unfavorable to the United States.”
Mr. Trump continues to issue tariff threats unless fentanyl production in Mexico is stamped out and migrants stop crossing the border. Ms. Sheinbaum has responded robustly to his demands on both security and migration.
Cracking down on fentanyl
She staved off his first threats of tariffs in February by sending 10,000 national guard members to the northern border, ostensibly to stop fentanyl from crossing into the United States. She presented preliminary figures to U.S. authorities detailing the seizure of 263 kilograms of fentanyl in February, a drop of 71 percent since October, suggesting a significant decline in fentanyl trafficking.
The president also appears to be reversing Mr. López Obrador’s security strategy of “hugs, not bullets”—an approach blasted by critics and the church as essentially a policy of state passivity toward criminals. Her administration has been stepping up cartel arrests and “decommissioning” drug labs. Mexico has handed over 29 cartel capos to the United States.
U.S. spy planes and drones now fly over Mexico. Ms. Sheinbaum claims the spy missions come at the request of the Mexican government.
“We observe that there’s been a change of [anti-crime] strategy,” said Jorge Atilano, S.J., director of the National Dialogue for Peace. He described greater coordination among Mexican law enforcement on all levels.
“The intention is to reduce homicides,” Father Atilano said. But he warned that violence in Mexico remains common and noted that official homicide rates may be declining only because drug cartels have gotten better at “disappearing victims.”
Mexico has also beefed up immigration enforcement, continuing a more aggressive posture on migration through Mexico that actually started in December 2023 in response to pressure from the Biden administration. Tougher enforcement—along with the Trump administration’s canceling the CBP One app, which allowed migrants to schedule appointments for pursuing asylum claims legally in the United States, has led to just 8,326 migrant encounters along the Mexican border in February—the lowest-ever monthly total, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“There are not many migrants arriving” from southern Mexico, said Obed Cuellar, a Dominican brother and director of the Frontera Digna shelter in Piedras Negras, opposite Eagle Pass, Tex. The shelter currently hosts just 40 migrants—a sharp drop from the hundreds who had been staying there prior to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
The current group includes some migrants who had hoped to make an asylum claim in the United States before their CPB One appointments had been cancelled. Overall, far fewer deportees have also arrived in border communities now.
“They’re putting them on flights down to southern Mexico,” Brian Strassburger, S.J., explained. Father Strassburger works with migrants in Matamoros and Reynosa, cities across the Rio Grande from Brownsville and McAllen, Texas. “That’s the whole strategy,” he said: Keep migrants in the south. “The more people that are on the [northern] border, the more people that could potentially cross.”
Financial markets are betting that Ms. Sheinbaum can placate the U.S. president. The peso has strengthened. And Barclays Bank said in a note to investors on March 12: “It is still our view that tariffs will not be implemented on Mexican imports, given how cooperative the Mexican government has been on security and immigration.”
Ms. Sheinbaum has found a way to keep a dialogue with Mr. Trump going—even to talk back without antagonizing him. She has often met his demands without losing face.
She often speaks of keeping a “cool head.” So far, it is a strategy that appears to be working.
