Trump's Radical Second-Term Agenda Set to Test Mexico's Fragility
Trump's Radical Second-Term Agenda Set to Test Mexico's Fragility
"With a mandated review of USMCA in 2026, the stakes are monumentally high," said AS/COA'S Eric Farnsworth to Financial Times.
During his first presidential campaign in 2015, Donald Trump blamed Mexico for taking US jobs while exporting drug traffickers and rapists. But five years later, he had updated the treaty binding their economies and called his Mexican counterpart a “great guy”.
Mexico’s business leaders felt they weathered the first Trump storm relatively well. Some believe President Claudia Sheinbaum can follow the playbook that worked for her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador: don’t criticise Trump and give him what he wants on migration.
But a second Trump administration poses far more serious challenges for Mexico, the biggest trading partner of the US. Business leaders and experts on the bilateral relationship fear that the fledgling Sheinbaum government is not well placed to navigate them. [...]
Hanging over the bilateral relationship is an impending review of the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement negotiated by Trump during his first term.
“Trump has already linked trade and migration during his campaign, threatening to use economic leverage to restrict migrant flows through Mexico,” said Eric Farnsworth, vice-president of the Council of the Americas business lobby in Washington.
“Sheinbaum will have to decide whether to resist this approach or . . . to accommodate US priorities. With a mandated review of USMCA in 2026, the stakes are monumentally high.”
