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By WILL WEISSERT, Related Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is lastly assembly along with his Mexican counterpart, Claudia Sheinbaum.
Their long-delayed first face-to-face dialogue is specializing in subsequent yr’s World Cup — and aspect discussions about tariffs — however not immigration. That’s regardless of Trump’s push to crack down on the U.S.-Mexico border being his centerpiece difficulty, and the driving power within the relations between each nations.
Trump has been in workplace for greater than 10 months and his taking so lengthy to see Sheinbaum in-person is putting, on condition that assembly with the chief of the nation’s southern neighbor is usually a high precedence for U.S. presidents.
Trump and Sheinbaum had been set to satisfy in June on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in Canada, however that was scrapped after Trump rushed again to Washington early amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran.
Soccer takes middle stage — however tariffs nonetheless loom massive
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was additionally on the Kennedy Heart in Washington for Friday’s 2026 World Cup draw. The U.S., Mexico and Canada are co-hosting the event, which begins in June.
Sheinbaum mentioned earlier than leaving Mexico that she deliberate to attend the draw and that she and Trump would seemingly meet briefly. She mentioned she’d speak to him in regards to the remaining U.S. tariffs on cars, metal and aluminum from Mexico, amongst different issues.
Trump mentioned upon arriving on the draw that he deliberate to satisfy with Sheinbaum.
Mexico is the US’ largest buying and selling accomplice. And, although the North American commerce pact Trump cast in his first time period, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Settlement, remains to be in place, U.S. Commerce Consultant Jamieson Greer has begun scrutinizing the settlement forward of a joint assessment course of due in July.
Within the meantime, the U.S. and Mexico’s priorities have been reshaped by the steep drop within the quantity of individuals crossing into the U.S. illegally alongside its southern border, in addition to the White Home’s — to this point largely unrealized — threats to impose massive commerce tariffs on its neighbor.
Trump and Sheinbaum have usually spoken by telephone to debate tariffs and Mexican efforts to assist fight the trafficking of fentanyl into the U.S. However regardless of different world leaders, together with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese language President Xi Jinping, having already met with Trump this time period, the assembly with Sheinbaum has been delayed till now.
The Trump whisperer?
Ready so lengthy to satisfy in particular person hasn’t appeared to harm Mexico’s president’s standing with Trump.
The 2 spoke by telephone in November 2024, with the then-U.S. president-elect declaring afterward that they’d agreed “to cease Migration via Mexico” — whilst Sheinbaum advised her nation had already been doing sufficient.
Trump quickly after taking workplace threatened to impose a 25% tariff on items imported from Mexico in an effort to power that nation to raised fight fentanyl smuggling, solely to later comply with a pause.
The White Home subsequently backed off tariff threats in opposition to most Mexican items. Then, in October, Sheinbaum introduced that the U.S. had given her nation one other extension to keep away from sweeping 25% tariffs on items it imports to the U.S. — whilst many objects coated by the USMCA commerce deal stay exempt.
Sheinbaum’s success at managing the bilateral relationship has led some to marvel if she has a particular reward for getting what she desires from him. She’s largely pulled it off by affording Trump the respect the U.S. president calls for from leaders around the globe — however particularly a neighboring nation — and by deploying occasional humor and pushing again, at all times respectfully, when vital.
Sheinbaum additionally defused one other potential level of rivalry, Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” by proposing dryly that North America must be renamed “América Mexicana,” or “Mexican America.” That’s as a result of a founding doc relationship from 1814 that preceded Mexico’s structure referred to it that method.
Nonetheless, Mexican officers proceed to work furiously to stave off extra tariffs going into 2026 — levies that would wreck its already low-growth financial system — and defend its residents dwelling within the U.S. because the Trump administration expands its mass deportation operations.
Sheinbaum’s authorities additionally lobbied exhausting however unsuccessfully in opposition to a 1% U.S. tax on remittances, or cash transfers that tens of millions of Mexicans ship house yearly from the US. It was accredited as a part of Trump’s tax reduce and spending package deal and takes impact Jan. 1.
Trump’s push for mass deportations
Trump has directed federal officers to prioritize main deportation pushes in Democratic-run cities — a unprecedented transfer that lays naked the politics of the problems. He’s additionally deployed the Nationwide Guard in an effort to curb crime, which has led to a spike in immigration-related arrests, in locations like Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, in addition to Memphis, Tennessee, and Portland, Oregon.
The Trump administration says its precedence is focusing on “the worst of the worst” criminals, however most people detained in operations across the nation haven’t had violent prison histories.
That always has meant focusing on Mexican residents who’ve lived and labored in the US for years and should face deportation to a homeland they not know nicely. It additionally has meant severe threats of declining remittance revenue, which has fallen for seven consecutive months.
The decrease variety of unlawful U.S.-Mexico border crossings has knocked immigration off its perch as the highest agenda merchandise for the U.S.-Mexico bilateral relations for the primary time in latest reminiscence.
Mexican officers now say conversations round immigration have shifted towards cajoling nations into taking again their residents and reintegrating them to maintain them from leaving once more — a main Trump administration precedence around the globe.
Cooperation on safety
Sheinbaum has blunted a few of the Trump administration’s robust speak on fentanyl and drug smuggling cartels by giving her safety chief Omar García Harfuch extra authority.
Mexico has additionally extradited dozens of drug cartel figures to the U.S., together with Rafael Caro Quintero, lengthy sought within the 1985 killing of a DEA agent. That present of goodwill, and a way more seen effort in opposition to the cartels’ fentanyl manufacturing, has gotten the Trump administration’s consideration.
That’s a big enchancment. Just a few years in the past, the DEA struggled to get visas for its individuals in Mexico, and then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador accused the U.S. authorities of fabricating proof in opposition to a former Mexican protection secretary, although he by no means offered proof to again up the allegation.
Not every part has gone so easily, although. Trump criticized Sheinbaum for rejecting his proposal to ship U.S. troops to Mexico to assist thwart the unlawful drug commerce.
Final month, Sheinbaum mentioned there was no method the U.S. army would have the ability to make strikes in Mexico, after Trump mentioned he was open to the thought. And she or he has denounced U.S. strikes on boats allegedly carrying medication within the Caribbean and jap Pacific.
“The president of Mexico is a stunning girl, however she is so afraid of the cartels that she will’t even assume straight,” Trump mentioned earlier this yr.
Sheinbaum declined to take the bait — and averted turning up the political stress — by sidestepping Trump’s criticism.
Related Press author Chris Sherman contributed from Mexico Metropolis.
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