Q REPORTS — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Thursday with “certainty” that she “never” proposed closing the border in her call with the president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, who on Wednesday affirmed that the Mexican government had guaranteed it.
“Everyone has their own way of communicating, but I can assure you, I give you the certainty, that we never, and we would be incapable, proposed that we were going to close the border in the north (of Mexico), or in the south of the United States. It has never been our approach,” declared Sheinbaum in her daily press conference.
Sheinbaum referred to the contrasting versions about her conversation with Trump, who stated in Truth Social that the Mexican president “agreed to stop migration through Mexico and to the US, effectively with the closure of the border,” while she said on X that “she reiterated that Mexico’s position is not to close borders.”
En nuestra conversación con el presidente Trump, le expuse la estrategia integral que ha seguido México para atender el fenómeno migratorio, respetando los derechos humanos. Gracias a ello se atiende a las personas migrantes y a las caravanas previo a que lleguen a la frontera.…
— Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo (@Claudiashein) November 28, 2024
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The president recalled that Trump “states that the issue of migration, at the border,” and “fentanyl, are two issues that concern him and that was the argument for putting the tariffs.”
“What I proposed to President Trump is the migration strategy that has been in place for months, which has been strengthened since, particularly, January 2024, in the face of an increase in migration that occurred, particularly in the last months of 2023, we are strengthening this comprehensive strategy,” Sheinbaum now commented.
Sheinbaum rules out a “tariff war”
The Mexican president assured this Thursday that “there will be no tariff war” with the US despite the fact that President-elect Trump announced on Monday that one of his first executive orders will be to impose 25% taxes on “all products” from Mexico and Canada, until the “invasion” of illegal migrants and drugs, particularly fentanyl, is “stopped.”
“There will not be a potential tariff war (…) It was a very friendly conversation between the two, we agreed that there will be a very good relationship,” said the president in her morning press conference, a day after speaking by phone with Trump about migration and drug trafficking.
Her statements contrast with the letter she sent on Tuesday to the Republican leader in which she warned that “one tariff will be followed by another in response” and in which she rejected his “threats.”
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“So we did not speak specifically about the issue of tariffs, but about the issue that he raised as matters of interest, and that if not, he was going to put tariffs, it was no longer raised in that way,” she said.
Progress in bilateral talks
Sheinbaum reiterated that migrant caravans are no longer reaching the border with the United States, while the Mexican government has a plan that includes jobs for those who stay in Mexico, shelters, voluntary returns, and preventing them from advancing from the south of Mexico.
“I raised all this with President Trump and told him: the caravan that he put in his publication is not going to reach the northern border because we have a strategy to deal with it in our country, so he evidently recognized this effort that is being made,” she said.
The Mexican President added that Trump recognized the efforts to combat drug trafficking in Mexico, such as the campaign that former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024) began about ‘Fentanyl kills.’
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“He brought up the humanitarian crisis of fentanyl that they are experiencing in the United States. He asked me if we had a consumption problem in Mexico. I told him that it was really very little. He asked me why and I told him: Mexican families take care of each other, we are very united in our families and we protect each other,” she said.
On Wednesday, the president and the private sector chambers presented a new business council as a united front to fight Trump’s tariffs and support the Government in the review of the Treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada (T-MEC).
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