It’s now painfully obvious to Mexico and Canada that failing to strengthen bilateral ties before Donald Trump’s trade war was economic recklessness.
When Prime Minister Mark Carney arrives in Mexico City on Thursday to meet President Claudia Sheinbaum, the leaders will be eager to send a strong message of North American unity — but not too strong. No one wants to provoke Washington.
“We ignore Mexico at our peril,” said Graeme Clark, Canada’s former ambassador to Mexico on Ottawa’s foreign policy blind spots. “We’ve been very focused on our own emotional reaction to the tariffs, to Trump’s rhetoric.”
But teaming up with Mexico in the middle of Trump’s trade war will be a delicate dance for two countries that prioritize U.S. relations but treat each other as afterthoughts.
While Mexico, of course, is in regular touch with Canada, the Sheinbaum team wants to avoid the appearance that the two are teaming up against the United States. Canadian officials don’t share the concern.
“We’re not discussing working with the Mexicans to gang up on the United States,” said one senior Canadian government official, granted anonymity to discuss details of the trip. “I’m not sure you can gang up on the United States.”
Mexico and Canada will announce a new “comprehensive strategic partnership” that will have leaders and ministers meeting more regularly, according to Canadian officials.
Sheinbaum and Carney are also expected to discuss ways to combat illicit drug and firearms trafficking, human trafficking and activities “linked to transnational organized crime” — issues the Trump administration has used as pretext to partly justify slapping tariffs on both countries.
Carney’s Mexico bilat is unconventional in the sense that Canadian leaders typically only visit the country within the confines of the North American Leaders’ Summit.
This week’s reciprocal visit follows his invitation to Sheinbaum to the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, this summer. That Canadian trip marked the first by a Mexican leader, outside the so-called “Three Amigos Summit” schedule, since former president Felipe Calderón addressed Parliament in June 2010.
Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, did not set foot in Canada during his six years in office.
Another senior Canadian government official emphasized the “great alignment” between priorities in Sheinbaum’s “Plan Mexico” industrial strategy and Carney’s similar ambitions for Canada to rely less on an “unreliable” America.
Sheinbaum and Carney are also expected to focus on investment in new port infrastructure in Mexico to potentially bypass the U.S. with a direct link between the two countries, officials said.
‘Uncharted territory’ for Canada
Clark, the former Canadian ambassador, said there’s pragmatism guiding Carney’s visit to Mexico to make inroads with a partner more experienced in dealing with lumps from Washington.
“This is uncharted territory for us, at least in terms of the tone of the rhetoric coming out of Washington,” he said of Trump’s Canada trolling. “The Mexicans are used to that, and maybe that’s why they’ve been able to keep their cool.”
Even as the Supreme Court weighs the legality of Trump’s global tariffs, his trade war is not slowing down. And Ottawa is girding itself for more pain after the Commerce Department signaled this week that the expansion of steel and aluminum tariffs is a possibility.
The stakes are high for Ottawa in trying to help key Canadian industries, such as steel, aluminum, autos and forestry, being targeted by Trump’s Section 232 tariffs.
Canada’s economy shrank in the second quarter this year with tariffs and policy uncertainty fueling drops in exports and business investment.
There’s increasing pressure on the new prime minister to quickly follow through on his election promise to diversify Canada’s trading links with concerns about a recession on the horizon.
Merchandise trade between the two countries hit C$56 billion last year, with C$9 billion in Canadian exports and C$47 billion in imports from Mexico.
Canadian companies are also significant investors in Mexico, accounting for roughly C$50 billion in investments in the country right now, with most of the money in mining and energy.
While changing Canadian policies have made pipelines a hard sell in Canada, Canadian companies are having more luck in Mexico.
Calgary-based TC Energy completed construction of its 440-mile Southeast Gateway natural gas pipeline in the Gulf of Mexico this year, a project viewed by the Mexican government as a boon to help spur economic growth to the country’s southern and southeast communities.
According to Clark, one major barrier in the way of improved relations is Canadians’ unevolved two-dimensional caricature of Mexico.
“It’s very difficult for Canadians to get beyond the clichéd view of Mexico as a beach destination where people drink tequila and do fiesta,” Clark said. “The reality is that Mexico is one of the world’s major economies.”
This perception has been held in some of Canada’s top offices. He described the current state of Canada-Mexico relations as one tinged with “mutual indifference and suspicion.”
Immediately after Trump’s reelection in November, both former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford expressed openness in cutting a trade deal with the U.S. alone — a trial balloon viewed as betrayal in Mexico City. The two leaders had forgotten that Mexico kept Canada alive in trilateral trade talks during Trump’s first administration.
Sheinbaum has brushed off queries about her government seeking a bilateral trade deal with Canada, saying there’s “no need.”
Trade war pressures
Much comparison has been made between the way Carney and Sheinbaum have triaged Trump’s tariff threats — that Mexico got a 90-day extension and Canada didn’t.
Heightened U.S. tensions helped Carney win Canada’s spring election, with the trade war highlighting his economic chops to cut a good deal with Trump, businessman to businessman, and avert the worst of a prolonged tariff fight.
Both Canada and Mexico face punishing U.S. tariffs that risk widespread economic pain to North America’s integrated supply chains, but Sheinbaum isn’t sweating the threat as much as Carney.
Mexico is accustomed to Trump threats and disparaging comments about immigrants, but it’s new terrain for Canada. Global carmakers’ new investments to build assembly plants in Mexico combined with low labor costs gives the country some leverage to withstand trade war shocks.
Carney is under increasing political and public pressure at home to get a win, soon, after making a series of concessions to keep U.S. trade talks going.
Taking each other for granted
A former longtime Trudeau-era trade minister understands how Mexico could feel slighted by Canada’s foreign policy rehaul in response to global trade chaos.
“Mexico and Canada collaborated quite well in the last renegotiation because it was just in our interest to do that in Trumpland,” said Mary Ng.
“We almost took the relationship for granted because we were just sort of working,” she said, adding there were pressures to deepen relations with Europe and Asia.
Ng said she and her Mexican counterparts had their heads down, “working and grinding away” because “it didn’t feel shiny and new.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ottawa’s recognition of China as “an increasingly disruptive global power” and protectionist policies from Trump and Joe Biden’s administrations pushed Canada to rethink its foreign policy in recent years.
Since Ng left Ottawa politics earlier this year, Canada’s international trade portfolio has been split between two ministers.
Carney tapped veteran Liberal Dominic LeBlanc to lead Canada-U.S. relations, including managing high-stakes United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement renewal talks next year.
Though it isn’t formally recognized in his job title, LeBlanc is also responsible for managing Canada-Mexico relations, given his involvement with trade talks.
Managing relations outside the U.S. and Mexico falls on International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu.
Juan Jose Gomez Camacho, Mexico’s former ambassador in Canada, said Ottawa’s hot-and-cold approach to bilateral relations has been known to create confusion.
It was a guessing game to Mexican officials, he said, if the Canadian government was keen to genuinely strengthen the relationship with Mexico bilaterally or if Ottawa’s interest would “always be subjected to the ups and downs of the Canada-U.S. relationship.
Gomez Camacho said he’s encouraged by the message Carney is sending with his trip.
“Mexican officials need to travel more to Canada,” he said.
Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.
