Sheinbaum: Trump Whisperer

March 10, 2025

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke to thousands of supporters in rally yesterday, celebrating her diplomatic triumph in again postponing trade tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump. (Associated Press)

She said dialogue and respect had prevailed in achieving a pause on U.S. tariffs and that the sovereignty of Mexico would always come first, reports Reuters. "So far it has yielded results and I think it will continue to do so," Sheinbaum said of the "respectful dialogue" with the United States.

Sheinbaum is lauded by analysts as one of the more successful world leaders when it comes to managing relations with the new U.S. president — “the world’s leading Trump whisperer,” according to the Washington Post. The secrets to her success include rigorous preparation for her calls with Trump — aides say “she doesn’t take umbrage at his insults … and instead calmly lays out facts.” She has made significant concessions — like sending 10,000 additional troops to the border, receiving thousands of deported migrants and extraditing 29 cartel leaders — while maintaining a strong sovereignty discourse.

She has also proved masterful with timing: The Sunday rally had originally been scheduled to announced retaliatory measures, after the U.S. slapped tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China last Tuesday. While China and Canada responded immediately, Sheinbaum delayed, saying she would speak to Trump first. They spoke Thursday, at which point Trump postponed the tariffs until April 2, citing respect for Sheinbaum. (See last Wednesday’s and Thursday’s posts.)

“Slow and steady (and frankly boring) policy wins the race,” writes Alex González Ormerod at the Mexico Political Economist. As opposed to the Canadians, who have drawn a series of redlines they have already needed to walk back, Mexico’s calculated calmness has proved to be an effective way of dealing with the erratic negotiating style of the Trump administration.

“As she has navigated Mexico’s most important bilateral relationship … Sheinbaum has shaken off the image that she is merely a dutiful protégée of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the founder of their leftist Morena party,” reports the Washington Post.

The confrontation with Trump has been very beneficial for Sheinbaum’s popularity at home: her approval rating leaped from 70 percent when she took office in October to 85 percent last month, according to a poll by the newspaper El Financiero.

More Mexico

• A collective of relatives of disappeared people in Mexico’s Jalisco state found 200 pairs of shoes a clandestine crematorium, “a disturbing demonstration of the country’s crisis of forced disappearance related to organised crime,” reports the Guardian.

More Trade War

• China announced tariffs of up to 100 percent on canola, pork and other foods from Canada — “a clear warning to Canada — and, indirectly, Mexico — not to cooperate with the United States on trade,” reports the New York Times.

• Trump's trade war with China will give Brazilian agricultural exporters an economic opportunity, but it could also fuel already high food inflation in Brazil, reports Reuters.

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Panama released U.S. third-country deportees

Panama’s government announced, Friday, that it would release 112 migrants who had been deported from the United States last month and were being held in a remote jungle camp. The move came after lawyers and advocates said the conditions violated Panamanian and international laws.

The government said they would be permitted to move around the country freely, and that they would be granted 30 days to leave — though this timeframe could potentially be extended. The migrants have essentially been thrust into a legal limbo, reports the Associated Press. Some migrants say they were told they could not request asylum in Panama.

Among the people released this weekend were migrants fleeing violence and repression in Pakistan and Iran, and 27-year-old Nikita Gaponov, who fled Russia due to repression for being part of the LGBTQ+ community and who said he was detained at the U.S. border, but not allowed to make an asylum claim, reports the Associated Press.

Panama’s “government cited humanitarian reasons for the decision but rights lawyers promptly expressed concerns that this could be a tactic to absolve the authorities of international scrutiny for their treatment of migrants while also putting them in more danger,” reports the Associated Press.

The decision is the latest challenge to Trump’s “migration diplomacy,” a set of policies aimed at moving migrants whose deportations are challenging to third countries. “The decision by Panama to release the migrants suggests that it may be harder than the Trump administration had hoped to press other nations into helping carry out mass expulsions,” reports the New York Times.

More Migration

• “Soldiers are trained for combat. They exist to defend a state against aggression, or to keep order in extreme emergencies. Soldiers are not trained to be police, who are civilians charged with protecting and serving the population with minimal violence. They are not trained to be teachers, judges, or tax collectors. And soldiers are absolutely not trained to be migration agents,” says WOLA, expressing concern about the threat of human rights abuses by militaries responding to migration across the Americas. (Via Americas Migration Brief)

• Trump’s “decision to declare a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border to protect against an “invasion” and almost immediately expel anyone who tries to enter has put the United States at a crossroads as it weighs its historical decisions to offer protection against the current age of mass migration,” reports the Washington Post, looking at the specific case of one person, “JC” who was attacked by cartel members and was rejected when he attempted to request asylum at the border. “ Immigrant rights groups have sued the Trump administration, saying its justification for the border shutdown violates federal law. They say that in the rush to end illegal migration, the restrictions are squeezing out people like JC whom the asylum laws are meant to protect.”

Haiti

• Haitian economist and former central bank chief Fritz Alphonse Jean took over the rotating presidency of Haiti's transitional presidential council on Friday. "Today our country is at war, and it is imperative we unite to win," he said in a speech, pledging a "corrective war budget" and to train more than 3,000 new police and army recruits this year to address endemic shortfalls in personnel, reports Reuters.

Venezuela

• U.S. officials say there are nine wrongfully detained U.S. citizens in Venezuela. Responsibility for the cases of the nine Americans determined to be wrongfully detained will now fall to the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, raising their political profiles and allowing the government to allocate more resources to securing their release, reports Reuters.

Argentina

• International conservative forums, like the Buenos Aires CPAC last December, are an alternative form of diplomacy that unites “participants not based on their official status or rank but rather their ideological affinities,” writes Lucía Cholakian Herrera in New Lines. “This kind of ideological diplomacy bypasses traditional channels and builds alliances beyond national interests.”

• CPAC is particularly successful “in one crucial aspect, even in smaller versions like the one in Argentina: It projects power. It creates the sensation that those involved are marching toward a new world order. And much like the progressive governments that swept Latin America a decade ago, that feeling is undeniably electrifying.” (New Lines)

• Cholakian references “the reactionary international” international relations professor Juan Gabriel Tokatlian’s term for a global network of conservative and far-right groups that defend traditional values, nationalism and the preservation of the status quo. (New Lines)

Flora y Fauna

• Climate change has undercut the economic promise of jellyfish fishing in Honduras, reports the Guardian.

• “Two Italian cacti smugglers have been fined for illegally trading plants from Chile – and for the cost of restoring the environment. Conservationists hope more cases will follow,” reports the Guardian.