Mexico has been in President Donald Trump’s crosshairs over border security and fentanyl for more than a decade. Yet it is the sole country to win a 90-day extension on trade talks, after steep penalties on dozens of other countries kicked in Thursday.
The reprieve reflects several months of behind-the-scenes work by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to cultivate a solid relationship with the ever-mercurial Trump. While the two have yet to meet in person, after a planned sit-down in Canada at the G7 summit in June was scuttled, they talk regularly on the phone.
During one of their early calls, Sheinbaum shared with Trump, who survived an assassination attempt, the personal risk she faced in agreeing to his request to extradite 29 alleged drug cartel members to the United States, according to a White House official and a former American official who worked on U.S.-Mexico issues during the first Trump administration. The moment highlighted Sheinbaum’s willingness to put her own safety at risk to work with him.
“She’s done a masterful job,” said Michael Camuñez, a former assistant secretary of Commerce at the International Trade Administration during the Obama administration, who now runs a binational business advisory firm. “She never takes the bait. She never gets out ahead of him. She always keeps the temperature icy cool.”
While some Mexican and U.S. officials say Sheinbaum’s billing as a “Trump whisperer” is oversold, they credit her with deftly navigating a challenging dynamic in a way that has eluded many of her peers: acceding to Trump’s demands on border security and fentanyl while keeping her domestic audience happy. Sheinbaum has benefitted from a favorable hand — and played it with unusual discipline, according to seven current and former U.S. and Mexican officials and others familiar with the relationship between the two world leaders, who like others in this story were granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamic.
Sheinbaum has a cadre of lieutenants who know the U.S. well, including some who served in the Mexican government during the first Trump administration like Economy Secretary Marcelo Ebrard. Widespread popular support has given her the domestic leeway to address some of Trump’s concerns, including her early decision to deploy 10,000 troops to the U.S. border. And Sheinbaum has remained measured when Trump has needled her country, including when he early on renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
So far, it’s worked. Mexico, the U.S.’s largest trading partner, has mostly avoided the kind of rhetorical attacks and punishing tariffs Trump has lobbed at Canada, the European Union and allies in Asia like Japan and South Korea.
“Her discipline, message, dialogue, accommodating the U.S. on security and on migration have all helped,” said the former American official who worked on U.S.-Mexico issues during the first Trump administration. “And given how Trump sometimes is given to just impromptu comments, it’s kept them from getting zapped on something bigger just because Trump was angered by something.”
And White House officials say Sheinbaum’s willingness to cooperate on Trump’s top priorities — migration and fentanyl — has bought her goodwill in the West Wing. In addition to her troop deployment and extradition efforts, Sheinbaum has ramped up drug enforcement by seizing fentanyl precursors, raiding opioid labs and arresting cartel members.
Crucially, she has not issued retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. and has remained warm in how she talks about Mexico’s relationship with its northern neighbor. In April, Canada announced countertariffs on American products, including 25 percent on certain autos, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has spoken out forcefully against American tariffs, which he has called a “direct attack” on his country.
So far, the White House appears appreciative of Sheinbaum’s approach.
“They’ve been more forthright,” said a second White House official. “They’ve handled this better.”
Sheinbaum has been deliberate in her relationship with Trump. She has received counsel on how to approach the U.S. president from both her predecessor and mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had a warm relationship with Trump during his first term, and prominent Mexican business leaders with ties to Trump world, according to three of the former U.S. and Mexican officials. Sheinbaum, a physicist who completed her postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, speaks English, including during calls with Trump. She has also earned a reputation for the data-driven approach she takes to their conversations, including citing the U.S.’s own data to show Trump that seizures of fentanyl at the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped dramatically.
“If you look at what the Mexican government has put out, and what she has said herself in the press conferences that she gives, she has been crystal clear about what Mexico is doing on the number of issues that affect both Mexico and the U.S. with clear data and clear follow up,” said one Mexican official. “It’s a clear roadmap with clear benchmarks and clear indicators, and I think that’s a language that Americans speak.”
Having a phone-only relationship with the American president has allowed Sheinbaum to avoid the kinds of Oval Office spectacles that have entrapped other foreign leaders during the second Trump administration, chiefly the infamous February blowup between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Far from publicly criticizing the Mexican president, Trump has only offered public praise for Sheinbaum. In a recent Truth Social post, Trump described a call with the Mexican leader as “very successful” and added that “more and more, we are getting to know and understand each other.”
“I think everybody, at least on the side of Mexico, thinks that if things are going well and in the right direction by phone, let’s continue doing that. Why risk being in the Oval Office, to be in a risky place?” said Enrique Perret, managing director of the U.S.-Mexico Foundation. “I think she has been very, very strategic on that.”
The Mexican people have given Sheinbaum a long leash in her dealings with the U.S. She was elected Mexico’s first female president in October in a landslide, winning about 60 percent of votes, and remains immensely popular at home, with her approval rate hovering around 75 percent in most polls.
That popular support has given her broad discretion to decide when to agree to Trump’s demands even as in recent days she has faced sensitive political dynamics amid a corruption scandal involving two former officials and the recent escape of a cartel operative from China.
“President Sheinbaum, because of her perceived ability to deal with President Trump, gets a bit of wiggle room in what she’s doing in negotiating in the United States, because the perception is that she has been able to more or less manage those pressure points from the U.S.,” said Arturo Sarukhán, who was Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S. during the Bush and Obama administrations. “Now, the question is, how long does that last?”
It has both helped and complicated matters for the Mexicans that Trump sees no distinction between trade talks and discussions on the border and fentanyl. Officials on both sides of the border agree the number of issues on the table has made it easier for Mexico to show it is making a good faith effort to work with the U.S.
“Mexico has more chips and also more pressure,” said Gerónimo Gutiérrez, Mexican ambassador to the U.S. during the first two years of the first Trump administration. “It’s not a pure trade discussion.”
Because Canada’s fentanyl problem was not as serious as Mexico’s, with Canadian fentanyl accounting for only 0.1 percent of the flow into the U.S., the country has not been able to show as much of a decline as Mexico. Still, Canada has launched a C$1.3 billion, six-year border plan that includes two new Black Hawk helicopters, 60 new border drones and detector dog teams.
But the U.S.’s northern neighbor has at points in recent weeks provoked Trump’s ire in other ways, including through its planned implementation of a digital services tax on U.S. tech companies, which Carney later backed down on, as well as its recent declaration that it intends to recognize Palestinian statehood.
“The best way to deal with the president is to take his concerns seriously, whether you agree with them or not, and try to find a creative way forward as opposed to dismissing them,” said one person close to the Trump administration. “I think that’s been some of the attitude of the Canadians and that’s why for a country where you would expect the relationship to go so much better than between the United States and Mexico, I think it’s just been harder.”
For their part, the Canadians have rejected comparisons between the 35 percent levy they were slapped with, which took effect Friday, and the 90-day reprieve the Mexicans received.
“We have over $2 billion of trade passing through the Canada-U.S. border every single day. And we also have different economic profiles, different levels of integration and a long-standing economic and defense and security relationship that is perhaps the most integrated in the world,” Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand told reporters Tuesday.
Mexican officials are cautiously optimistic that strong ties with the U.S. will bolster the country’s position ahead of the upcoming review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which is set to begin in earnest next year. So far, the White House has clarified that recently announced tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods apply only to products that don’t comply with the agreement — but it hasn’t updated what share of trade those tariffs actually cover for either country.
A second Mexican official said Sheinbaum’s leadership could mean greater relief as those figures are determined, and could “open the door to smoother USMCA talks and possibly ease some of the tensions that have made renegotiations difficult.”
Still, Mexico’s apparent readiness to agree to Trump’s demands isn’t without its costs. Frustrations are growing in Mexico that the country has agreed to many of the U.S.’s demands but with little to show in return, and anxiety is high that Sheinbaum’s luck with Trump could simply one day run out, jeopardizing not only her political future but the future of her political party, Morena.
“For Sheinbaum to keep a decent trade agreement with the United States, not a perfect one, but a decent, workable trade agreement is a must-have for her administration, her legacy, and I would even say for the movement — for Morena, in general,” Gutiérrez said. “She really has to strive to keep the ball rolling and to get to a decent conclusion.”
Ari Hawkins contributed to this report.
