On November 28th, 2024, President Joe Biden said, “We’re surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and the two allies: Mexico and Canada. And the last thing we need to do is screw up those relationships,” in response to President Trump’s day-one tariff hikes that he boasted about during his campaign regarding the United States’ largest trading partners: Mexico and Canada.
For decades, the three North American countries have held economically, politically, and socially tight relations. The trio of North American powers have long been the envy of the world: Canada is overflowing with natural resources, Mexico is predicted to surpass China’s manufacturing monopoly, the United States being the world’s one and only superpower is revered for its economic and military might. North America truly is a force to be reckoned with, only however, if the nations remain united.
In Mexico, the cartel problem continues to fester as an ugly stain that won’t wash off no matter how hard you try. In the states of Guerrero, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas, the week of July 7th, 2023 was nothing more than a show of social muscle that the cartels hold. Within a moment’s notice, thousands of regular, everyday people, marched down to Guerrero’s capital whilst scaring off any attempts by the state government to protect judges and lawmakers, with the goal of making the government meet their demands. The state’s governor at the time, Evelyn Cecilia Salgado, a member of the Morena Party, was powerless in the face of such social unrest that was caused by cartel influence.
Since 2008 Tamaulipas has been a battleground with little-to-no help being offered by the Mexican government, and residents are getting tired of it. They’re asking the government to get closer to the U.S. to help the state combat the violence, yet the prestige of American power among even American citizens is beginning to decline.
Around 47% of Americans believe that the U.S. is getting weaker, while 66% say China is getting stronger despite the American military making significant advances in defense technologies. Yet the issue of America getting weaker lies elsewhere.
Out-of-control immigration, record-high inflation, unsustainable costs of living, and the perceived sense that crime is getting worse, have all led to national pride decreasing to near record-lows. 67% of Americans are “at least proud to be American,” since 2018, which is significantly lower than the previous percentage of 75% who were proud to be American.
Donald J. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement promised Americans a self-sufficient nation, un-reliant on foreign countries and free from the consequences of globalization. This meant improved employment, stronger manufacturing industries, and a better economy. This goal is what inspired some voters to align with Trump’s campaign and help him win office in 2016 and again in 2024.
To some, the 2024 election results signified a crushing defeat for peace, and to others the election results signified a monumental victory for security.
One of Trump’s main points during his campaign was securing the southern border with Mexico, mass deportations, and fighting drugs. In order to have any chance of success at completing these goals, there has to be cooperation with Mexico, a nation that was previously accepting of American intervention, but may no longer be as willing to be considered a “puppet” to U.S. policy.
Since the Morena Party was elected into power, such clashes between the U.S. and Mexico have been happening more frequently than ever. The moment that former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, commonly referred to as AMLO, and his party, Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (National Regeneration Movement), or the Morena Party, was elected into power, Morena showed that it was focused on protecting Mexico’s sovereignty and national pride to a great extent, even at the risk of its own citizens.
The first conflict that arose during Trump’s first term with Mexico was around the North American Free Trade Agreement, when President Enrique Pena Nieto was in power before Obrador.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was an agreement between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico that allowed for trade, free from tariffs. It was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1992 and also meant better labor regulations and safety.
Trump positioned his party against NAFTA in his first term, after years of the agreement’s popularity deteriorating among Republicans, who saw it as a threat to American jobs and manufacturing. As a result, on October 1st, 2018, President Trump revoked the agreement and replaced it with the newly-negotiated US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that took effect July 1st, 2020.
This act required that more regulation and oversight be taken to ensure that potential exports are made with a high percentage of parts from the country exporting the goods. The USMCA ensures that more parts used in the manufacturing of products will be from the country of origin; at least 72% of parts must be made from the country exporting the product.
As the USMCA is set to be reviewed in 2026, Trump and his cabinet aim to increase regulation of the agreement and impose stricter manufacturing laws to prevent China from selling goods through Canada or Mexico.
During Trump’s first presidency, President Obrador was welcoming of the U.S. and its policies so long as the agreements benefitted Mexico. Both Trump and Obrador have a “transactional view of politics;” both leaders need to benefit or gain something from any deals made, which allowed their governments to move quicker in coming to a middle ground on issues like immigration and trade.
In Trump’s second term however, will have to deal with a different Mexican government than what was under Obrador. When Obrador’s term was coming to a close, he appointed his mentee, Claudia Sheinbaum. Promising continuity of AMLO’s wildly popular policies, Sheinbaum would secure her path to becoming Mexico’s first female president.
Despite being mentored by Obrador, Sheinbaum did not adopt his traits and she is not as transactional as her predecessor was: Sheinbaum is more ideological as she has a strong background in political activism during her younger years. Add the fact that she is a member of Mexico’s left wing and you get a shaky political match-up with Trump’s hard-right views on politics.
Since both countries have expansive trade relations that are vital to each other’s national security, the U.S. and Mexico hold a lot of influence over each other, and therefore both have leverage. During Trump’s first term in office, he used the U.S.’s economic leverage to enact America-First economic policies, and Mexico had little to fight back with. Now with China looming as an adversary in the near future, Trump is being more aggressive with countries who are allied with the U.S. yet are also close to China. This is best exemplified by Trump’s many tariffs.
A tariff is a tax on exports which a foreign country can use as a source of additional revenue or as a negotiating tool. Trump however, is weaponizing them. Since the U.S. is the largest importer in the world, any U.S.-imposed tariffs have the potential to disrupt foreign economies to a dramatic extent, as was seen in the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. This act, signed by republican president Herbert Hoover, led to the average tariff being around 40%, and caused the collapse of foreign banks and a near two-thirds decline in global trade.
With 80% of Mexico’s exports going to the U.S. alone, such high tariffs, like the 100% tariff threatened during his campaign, would be damaging to Mexico’s trade and certainly hurt the country to a greater extent than the U.S., as the U.S. economy is larger and more prepared to deal with economic burden.
Even in the face of the world’s largest economy, Sheinbaum has responded and threatened retaliatory tariffs at the U.S., which is a tell-tale sign of how strong the Mexican government will be in resisting U.S. action against Mexico in future.
Initially, this meant higher prices on imported goods such as gas, automobiles, agriculture, and general instability of prices. Mexico’s retaliation against U.S. policy does not end here, and Sheinbaum has made it clear to Trump that she will not let Mexico be just an extension of Washington D.C.’s will.
For example, when Trump declared that, as president, he will deport illegal immigrants to Mexico, he also announced that he will use the Alien Enemies Act during his inaugural address, an act which survived the abolishment of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1801. It allows governments to deport non-citizens that the president believes pose a threat to national security during times of war or when the government believes an ‘invasion’ or “incursion” is happening.
Trump’s rhetoric of calling illegal caravans filled with migrants “invasions” could prove to be valuable to him in using the Alien Enemies Act to deport illegal immigrants to Mexico and neighboring countries. His plan to deport what he claims between 15-20 million illegal immigrants, 3% of the U.S. population, will use the National Guard and local police to work in unison to raid the homes of illegal immigrants and deport them to Mexico regardless of their country of origin.
Trump’s plan would be modeled after President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback, which deported up to 1.8 million Mexican immigrants and also used military strategies and tactics to conduct informal raids on suspected illegal immigrants, where even American citizens were mistaken for illegal immigrants and deported unlawfully. There already exist reports of similar things happening.
Sheinbaum initially announced that she will only accept deportees that originated from Mexico, and not accept any from foreign countries. Her priorities are protecting deported Mexican immigrants and not any other countries’ deportees. Non-Mexican deportees would be redirected to their country of origin.
However it is here that a weak point is also seen: Mexico can not afford to position itself against the U.S. for too long. If Trump believes he is not getting the most out of Mexico to benefit American interests, then Mexico would have to leverage its trade and manufacturing power in policy negotiations in order to protect itself.
As a result, Sheinbaum changed her rhetoric into saying that Mexico would be accepting deportees from other countries, only to redirect them to other Latin American countries. Furthermore, the recent 25% tariffs that Trump signed against Mexico have been paused from going into effect for 30 days as of February 3rd, 2025. This is the result of a deal that Sheinbaum made with Trump: in exchange for delaying the tariffs, Mexico will send 10,000 soldiers to secure the border with the U.S.
If Trump does not accept any future compromise with Mexico however, then the nation would have to comply with the president’s policies in order to protect Mexico’s part in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) which Mexico can not afford to lose.
The USMCA, although not too different from NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), still provides extremely important trade access to the U.S., and remains crucial to Mexico’s economic growth. Losing the deal in 2026 when it comes up for review might not have any drastic immediate effect on Mexico, but in the long run the nation would face a crumbling export market.
On the issue of the Mexican cartels, the situation has become even more complicated, where the two nations have differing views of how to strike down the cartels for good.
Sheinbaum, like her predecessor, has argued that the issue of the cartels is an American issue and not one that needs to be solved by Mexico. According to her, the U.S. needs to address addiction problems in the U.S. instead of focusing on those who produce the drugs. In short, her proposition is to attack the buyers not the sellers, whereas the U.S. has vied for the opposite.
The police of Mexico have been gradually losing their power as the public distrusts the corruption-ridden institution, opting for the military as a replacement despite the police still making an overwhelming amount of drug-related arrests. Soldiers are trained to kill where the police are trained to investigate, and the Mexican government under Obrador has given the military more control of public sectors like construction and hospitals, which have led to frequent abuses of power with little consequences faced.
The militarization of Mexico could be seen as a positive thing for the Trump administration in order to cut down on smuggling and illegal crossings at the Southern border, yet it could also prove to cause more challenges than solutions as cartels are arming themselves with make-shift tanks, .50 caliber rifles, and even drone-bombs in order to protect their profits. This is where Trump’s suggestion of using the U.S. military to fight the cartels in Mexico becomes a possibility.
Texas Republican senator Dan Crenshaw pushed for the U.S. to declare the cartels as foreign-terrorist organizations (FTOs) in 2023, which would give the U.S. legal grounds to use the military against them. The U.S. would use precision drone strikes and precision raids on known drug infrastructure, rather than the traditional boots-on-the-ground decision that was seen during the U.S.’s War on Terror.
Sheinbaum understandably has pushed back on this plan. “Mexico is a free, independent, sovereign country – and that is above everything else,” she said in an interview. Although highly unlikely, Trump’s willingness to even announce such a drastic solution to the drug crisis shows the President’s strong resolve, which could prove problematic.
Such a declaration on the cartels would allow for nations to put travel restrictions or outright travel bans, harming Mexico’s tourism industry that makes up for 8% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). A nation’s GDP measures the monetary value of goods and services that a nation produces within its borders.
However, with both nations having strongly interconnected economies, especially when it comes to trade, Congress could be hesitant to allow Trump’s highest tariffs to pass even with a Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives, let alone allowing for a “soft invasion” of Mexico that would include letting U.S. Special Forces conduct covert operations inside Mexico, an idea that has been floating around Trump’s inner circle.
Indeed the U.S. and Mexico relations have been faced with growing tension, yet in the past the bond between the two nations has proven strong. Both nations depend on each other in one form or another. Mexico heavily relies on the U.S. for trade and protection, and the U.S. relies on Mexico’s manufacturing to be able to combat China.
Despite a possibly rough four years to come, Mexico and the United States will continue to have, perhaps shaky, economic ties and solid, yet highly strained, political relations. Any military action against the cartels is highly unlikely, though not impossible, and the same goes for future trade wars with Mexico. It will be no surprise if there are frequent back-and-forths between Trump and Sheinbaum for the next four years.
During Trump’s first term, the president boasted isolationism from Europe and Asia, roughly the same immigration stances as today, and a return to American manufacturing dominance. In 2025 however, Trump has threatened retaking the Panama Canal, occupation of Greenland, and statehood for Canada.
In the unlikely event that at least one of those threats come to fruition, the U.S. would no longer be seen as the world’s defender of the peace and the resulting aftermath could end up doing more harm than good to America’s status as a benevolent superpower. Countries will fear rather than respect the U.S. as no country on Earth can currently match the American military, and even near-peer adversaries like China are struggling to keep up.
However the main point of Trump’s second term will be pushing American interests overseas, improving Americans’ quality of life, and ensuring that America remains #1. If the Morena Party proves to be a roadblock in those goals, then Trump will almost certainly act accordingly regardless of the potential consequences.
The trio of North American powers have long been the envy of the world: Canada is overflowing with natural resources, Mexico is predicted to surpass China’s manufacturing monopoly, the United States being the world’s one and only superpower is revered for its economic and military might. North America truly is a force to be reckoned with, only however, if the nations remain united.