By Henry Srebrnik, Moncton Times & Transcript
Canadians are, understandably, obsessed with U.S. President Donald Trump as the country begins to negotiate a new trade deal to replace the one signed in 2020 that replaced NAFTA. But Mexico is equally anxious. (By the way, note that in Canada the acronym used is CAMUSA, while south of the border its USMCA.)
Meanwhile, Canada and Mexico have formed a new strategic partnership to present a “united front” in their trade discussions with Washington. Following a meeting in Mexico City Sept. 18, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum agreed to deepen ties, vowing closer co-operation on trade and security, as both countries grapple with rising economic pressure from the United States.
The two leaders find themselves facing the same challenge: a protectionist U.S. president who has redefined global and North American trade by imposing tariffs on many countries. They agreed to develop further trade and security relationships, but re-emphasized the importance of a North American trade deal.
We in this country may not notice it, but due to drug trafficking by cartels and illegal migration from south of the U.S. border, Trump is far more bellicose when it comes to Mexico. In the first days of his second administration, he took aim at bolstering security along the U.S.-Mexico border. In a number of executive orders, he declared a national emergency at the border, allowing him to deploy military personnel there and unlocking federal funding for border enforcement and construction. Trump also ordered the deployment of 1,500 active-duty troops to the southern border.
On Dec. 15, Trump awarded a group of 13 soldiers and Marines with the recently established Mexican Border Defence Medal during a presentation at the White House. The medals were replicas of military medals created in 1918 that were awarded to U.S. troops led by General John J. Pershing, who fought against the paramilitary forces of Francisco “Pancho” Villa in 1916-1917 during the Mexican Revolution. American warships had also shelled the port of Veracruz in 1914. Those were the last times the United States attacked its southern neighbour. The symbolism was not lost on Sheinbaum.
Mexico’s national identity is deeply entwined with this legacy of U.S. conquest and imperial bullying. The United States took half of Mexico’s land in the mid-19th century and periodically intervened in the decades that followed to protect American interests. Maybe Trump is less aware of this history, given his focus on the current issues of drugs and immigration. “People forget now that the border has been secure for actually seven months,” Trump stated at the Washington ceremony.
Trump also designated the synthetic opioid fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction.” The illegal fentanyl tablets sold on American streets are made primarily in clandestine laboratories in Mexico and smuggled across the U.S. border by Mexican trafficking organizations. Now the Trump administration has compared the drug to a nuclear or chemical threat.
Trump has touted his administration’s efforts to halt the influx of the drug into the country, saying at the ceremony that the amount coming in has dropped by 50 per cent since his return to the White House. It might also be seen as part of the administration’s campaign to target drug smuggling vessels in the Caribbean Sea from Venezuela and the capture of President Nicolas Maduro.
Sheinbaum is now walking a tightrope. She has to appease Trump enough to avoid air strikes – which after the Christmas attack by the U.S against terrorists in northern Nigeria is no idle possibility -- while firmly standing up for Mexican sovereignty and maintaining her own domestic political support. She was, after all, elected president as the candidate of the left-wing National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party.
Now entering the third year of her six-year term, she has won widespread praise at home for her handling of Trump so far. Sheinbaum has learned to deal with Trump by separating his political statements from what the United States actually wants.
“We have a president on the Mexican side who is more interested in cooperating than her predecessor was,” Roberta Jacobson, former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, told Nick Miroff, a former Washington Post reporter now with the Atlantic magazine, referring to former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “I think she has done an amazing job navigating that minefield.”
But treating traffickers as terrorists converts what has been mostly a public health and law enforcement issue into a national security one. Sheinbaum has therefore set firm limits on what it considers to be nonnegotiable matters, rejecting the possibility of joint operations that would allow U.S. forces to embed with Mexican troops. But she has been willing to expand cooperation on almost everything else.
Canada is not the only country whose trade has been overwhelmingly with the U.S. More than 80 per cent of Mexico’s exports now go north, leaving Mexico more dependent than ever on its northern neighbor, and subject to Trump’s whims. Mexico was the United States’ top goods trading partner in 2024 with total two-way goods trade at US$840 billion. In comparison, U.S. goods trade with Canada totaled US$760 billion, while American trade with China totaled US$582 billion.
As for Canada-Mexico trade, it saw nearly US $41billion in goods exchanged in 2024, making Mexico Canada’s third largest partner and Canada Mexico’s fifth.
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