Throughout his first presidential marketing campaign in 2015, Donald Trump blamed Mexico for taking US jobs whereas exporting drug traffickers and rapists. However 5 years later, he had up to date the treaty binding their economies and known as his Mexican counterpart a “nice man”.

Mexico’s enterprise leaders felt they weathered the primary Trump storm comparatively properly. Some imagine President Claudia Sheinbaum can observe the playbook that labored for her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador: don’t criticise Trump and provides him what he needs on migration.

However a second Trump administration poses much more critical challenges for Mexico, the most important buying and selling companion of the US. Enterprise leaders and specialists on the bilateral relationship concern that the fledgling Sheinbaum authorities will not be properly positioned to navigate them.

Trump can be a extra highly effective president this time, with doubtless majorities in each homes of Congress, He can be decided to press a tougher cut price together with his weaker southern neighbour, which is affected by drug-related violence and sluggish progress.

“Trump redoubled is far more tough to take care of . . . he’s a bully, and [Sheinbaum] is an inexperienced nationwide politician,” stated Andrés Rozental, a former Mexican deputy international minister. “I get the impression that it’s going to be a lopsided relationship, with the Individuals demanding continually extra from Mexico, and Mexico being unable to commit and even to make a serious distinction.”

Trump’s marketing campaign threats — blanket tariffs, inducements to US firms to deliver manufacturing again dwelling, the mass deportation of round 11mn unlawful migrants and the designation of drug cartels as terrorist teams — would hit Mexico disproportionately laborious.

Round half the migrants residing with out papers within the US are Mexican, Mexico is dwelling to 2 of the world’s greatest and most feared drug cartels, and the nation relies on the US marketplace for 83 per cent of its exports. 

Trump can be one of many greatest challenges for Sheinbaum, a leftwing occasion loyalist and scientist whose tutorial background and stiff public method might hardly be extra totally different from the previous New York property tycoon’s swashbuckling previous.

Mexico’s first feminine president has stated little to this point about how she plans to take care of Trump, apart from that there was “not a single motive to fret” concerning the nations’ “good relationship”.

Sheinbaum spoke with Trump this week, saying the decision was “very cordial”. He introduced up the border and that she informed him there can be a time to debate it, she stated.

Her predecessor and mentor López Obrador constructed an unexpectedly sturdy private rapport with Trump. Regardless of the 2 males’s ideological variations, they shared a desire for an authoritarian populist, nationalist model of presidency and transactional diplomacy. 

López Obrador deployed the military-led Nationwide Guard to dam migrant routes and agreed to take again third-country migrants as they waited for his or her US asylum claims to be heard, whereas Trump backed off on threats to shut the border, elevate tariffs and make Mexico pay for a border wall.

Beneath Joe Biden’s presidency, the connection continued alongside related traces, with the US avoiding public criticism of Mexico’s rampant drug violence and López Obrador’s assaults on democratic establishments, in return for co-operation on holding again the flows of migrants.

Arturo Sarukhán, a former Mexican ambassador to the US and Washington-based marketing consultant, stated that whereas Sheinbaum would in all probability be extra ideological than López Obrador, “what’s much more essential is how a profoundly misogynistic man like Donald Trump will work together with the primary lady president of Mexico”.

Non-public sector and forex traders stay looking forward to a repeat of the Trump-López Obrador love-in, with this week’s fall within the peso not as steep as when Trump was first elected. One senior banking govt stated most of his massive Mexican purchasers wished Trump to win, hoping the Republican’s commerce warfare with China would push extra US firms to take a position south of the border.

“We’re interdependent whether or not we prefer it or not,” stated Antonio Ortiz-Mena, founding father of AOM Advisors and a former diplomat. “Mexico has extra savvy and extra market leverage and joint manufacturing leverage than [people think].”

However endurance with Mexico has run skinny within the US capital in recent times, with co-operation on combating drug cartels at a current low, US firms complaining of a deteriorating enterprise local weather, and Mexico ignoring US considerations a few wide-ranging overhaul of its judiciary.

Observers in Washington level out that the nation lacks highly effective mates on Capitol Hill who would assist it fend off hostile legislative strikes. Sheinbaum has but to call an envoy to the US.

“I’m unsure the state of affairs in 2024 is identical as in 2018,” stated Martha Bárcena, Mexico’s ambassador to the US throughout the first Trump administration. “I see many extra adjustments in US public opinion that’s seeing Mexico much less and fewer as a buddy and extra as a nationwide safety menace.”

The Mexican chief’s hard-left credentials are additionally unlikely to endear her to Trump. Sheinbaum didn’t deny claims from Colombian President Gustavo Petro final month that she was a former member of his now-defunct M-19 guerrilla motion throughout the Eighties and she or he just lately despatched an support cargo of oil to Cuba’s communist authorities.

Trump’s “coverage in direction of Latin America goes to be managed by the Cuban-Individuals in Florida”, stated Bárcena. “They won’t be proud of Mexico giving oil to Cuba, serving to [Venezuela President Nicolás] Maduro . . . that can be one other very massive level of friction.”

Hanging over the bilateral relationship is an impending assessment of the US-Mexico-Canada free commerce settlement negotiated by Trump throughout his first time period.

“Trump has already linked commerce and migration throughout his marketing campaign, threatening to make use of financial leverage to limit migrant flows via Mexico,” stated Eric Farnsworth, vice-president of the Council of the Americas enterprise foyer in Washington.

“Sheinbaum must resolve whether or not to withstand this method or . . . to accommodate US priorities. With a mandated assessment of USMCA in 2026, the stakes are monumentally excessive.” 

Knowledge visualisation by Amy Borrett