As Trump shakes up global politics, Mexico could be most affected...WAPO
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As President Donald Trump rolls out his “America First” policies, few countries have more to lose than Mexico.
MEXICO CITY — Every minute, about $1.5 million in goods cross the U.S.-Mexico border. Trucks loaded with strawberries, Corona Light and washing machines chug north from Mexico. Going south are U.S. corn and spark plugs, nuclear reactors and Pop-Tarts. The neighbors’ economies have never been more intertwined.
As President Donald Trump rolls out his “America First” policies, few countries have more to lose than Mexico. About 80 percent of its exports go to its neighbor. Mexicans make up the biggest group of immigrants living illegally in the United States, making them a prime target of the new “mass deportation” program. And Trump is so incensed by the smuggling of fentanyl from Mexico that he has floated the idea of a military operation.
Trump has been warning he’ll impose 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada as soon as Saturday, unless the countries curb the flow of migrants and drugs. That could simply be a negotiating tactic.
But his policies raise the possibility of a deep fracture in America’s relations with its neighbors. And the U.S. tactics could wind up backfiring. If they weaken the Mexican economy or leave the country more unstable, migration could surge and criminal activity could intensify at the border, analysts say.
“The peace and prosperity of Mexico is at stake, frankly,” said Shannon O’Neil, senior vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations. She added: “The problems in Mexico don’t stay there.”
The United States and Mexico have a fraught history. Mexicans are still painfully aware of U.S. invasions in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the loss of more than half their territory — including current-day California, Nevada and Utah.
The North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, marked a new era for the neighbors. It also united two countries in vastly different stages of development. Back in 1994, when it took effect, Mexico was on nobody’s list of global manufacturers. “Mexico basically exported oil,” said Luis de la Calle, an economist.
Since then, bilateral trade in goods has grown eightfold, to more than $800 billion per year. The integration “is much more profound than people realize,” de la Calle said. Consider the average American doctor’s office: The latex gloves, face mask, thermometer and blood pressure gauge all probably came from Mexico, he said.
Exports are now the engine of Mexico’s economy. For U.S. companies, meanwhile, NAFTA provided legal guarantees and a lower-wage workforce that allowed them to sell their products — from Oreos to laptop computers — at lower prices. (The accord was updated in 2020 and is now called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.)
During his first term, Trump also threatened tariffs on Mexico. It avoided them by clamping down on migration. But the U.S. president now is casting tariffs in a new light: not just as a tool to force concessions, but also as a way to raise revenue and drive factory jobs back to the United States.
The 25 percent tariffs would probably tip Mexico’s economy into recession. That could have various knock-on effects. “It would create a factory of migrants” heading for the United States, said Lorenzo Meyer, a historian and professor emeritus at the Colegio de México.
Mexico could respond to tariffs with its own countermeasures. A trade war would drive up prices in the United States, economists say — on everything from Mexican-grown berries to pickup trucks.
Trump has expressed a willingness to use military force against traffickers bringing fentanyl into the United States.
Deaths from overdoses of the drug have skyrocketed in the United States in the past few years. Although they have recently declined, the synthetic opioid still kills tens of thousands of Americans each year. U.S. officials say most fentanyl is trafficked into the United States by Mexican criminal groups.
Trump is right that Mexican organized-crime groups are growing more powerful. They’ve increasingly infiltrated Mexico’s politics and economy. But any unilateral U.S. military action would probably shatter relations with this deeply nationalistic country.
Moreover, any American raid would be unlikely to solve the fentanyl problem, Mexican officials and analysts say. In recent years, Mexican security forces using U.S. intelligence have captured dozens of drug kingpins, but the cartels have splintered and reconfigured. “If you cut off the head [of a group], a lot of others emerge to take his place,” said Luis Rubio, president of the México Evalúa think tank.
Crime groups could actually become more powerful if Mexico’s economy slumps and it’s struggling to absorb hundreds of thousands of deportees, O’Neil said. An academic study in 2023 estimated that Mexican cartels recruit about 350 people per week.
It is particularly difficult to choke off the supply of fentanyl, because it is easy to make and is so concentrated it can be smuggled in backpacks. Still, Mexico appears to be responding to the U.S. pressure. Last month, it seized over a ton of fentanyl, its biggest such bust ever, officials said.
Trump has also moved to designate Mexican cartels as terrorist groups. That could lead to more prosecutions of those who aid the crime organizations. But Mexican officials worry it could open the door to U.S. military action.
“We all want to fight the drug cartels,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said after Trump’s announcement. The Americans “in their territory, us in our territory.”
Trump has acted quickly to try to reduce illegal migration. He has declared an emergency at the border and effectively halted the asylum system. In the first week of his “mass deportation” program, about half of the 7,300 people removed were sent to Mexico.
Mexico may have less room to negotiate than it did during his first term, analysts say.
“The Mexican government needs to find a place between outright confrontation that leads to tariffs, and complete subjugation to U.S. demands that leads to a loss of face with the Mexican public,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute.
Selee said Mexico could follow the playbook of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. He was elected as a leftist but built a friendly relationship with Trump. Mexico broke up migrant caravans, detained a record number of U.S.-bound migrants and allowed asylum seekers to wait on its territory while their claims were pending in U.S. courts.
After migration surged during the Biden administration, with a historic peak of nearly 250,000 apprehensions at the southern U.S. border in December 2023, Mexico again agreed to ramp up enforcement. Arrests dropped to 47,000 in December 2024.
Sheinbaum, López Obrador’s protégée, has responded diplomatically to Trump’s threats, promising to protect Mexican sovereignty while pledging cooperation.
“We have to avoid confrontations; it’s a responsibility, at the same time, to treat each other as equals, never subordinates,” she told reporters.
Selee said the deportation of Mexican immigrants who have lived in the United States for many years and who don’t have criminal records could constrain Sheinbaum’s ability to negotiate.
“I do think there’s a point in which the sympathy Mexicans have with their own citizens and family members living in the United States could really create a backlash against cooperation,” he said.
Martha Bárcena, Mexico’s ambassador to Washington during Trump’s first term, noted that the countries were able to overcome their differences back then. This time, however, the U.S. president has a greater margin of victory, control of Congress and more popular backing for a crackdown on migration.
“The government of Trump 2.0 is different,” she said.
Bárcena said one of Mexico’s most urgent issues is the Trump administration’s cancellation of the CBP One app, which allowed migrants to seek U.S. asylum appointments from Mexico. That decision has left tens of thousands stranded here.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen to them, who has the responsibility to help them and repatriate them,” she said.
Analysts said the Trump administration’s pressure could translate into some positive developments — such as new agreements to fight fentanyl tracking. Security cooperation faltered under López Obrador, who left office in the fall.
“The most important thing is for Mexico and the Mexican government to recognize that organized crime is a threat to Mexico — it’s a threat to Mexican sovereignty,” Bárcena said.
Valentina Muñoz Castillo contributed to this report.
Mary Beth Sheridan is a correspondent covering Mexico and Central America for The Washington Post. Her previous foreign postings include Rome; Bogota, Colombia; and a five-year stint in Mexico in the 1990s. She has also covered immigration, homeland security and diplomacy for The Post, and served as deputy foreign editor from 2016 to 2018. @marybsheridan