"For a president who was criticized early in her campaign as being “uncharismatic” (in large part an unsubtle attempt to play her off against her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador), she has, in barely six months in office, become an international example for how to deal with a volatile, capricious Trump. Her poise and the famous cabeza fría in the face of tariff and invasion threats, Trump’s designation of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and a series of sloppy, adolescently antagonistic communiqués from the American president have won her plaudits from world leaders as disparate as Gustavo Petro and Olaf Scholz. Finessing the art of statesmanship in the face of crass belligerence, the presidenta has walked a fine line between firmness and flexibility, tossing Trump something he can use to declare a “win” without compromising her position in future negotiations. This has gained her repeated praise from Trump personally, who has openly cribbed her idea for carrying out a national anti-fentanyl campaign. Where Justin Trudeau went to grovel at Mar-a-Lago, or Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, and Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to the White House only to get snapped at, Sheinbaum has remained in Mexico, negotiating, governing, and refusing to play Trump’s game on his terms. And as it turned out, delaying the announcement of reciprocal tariffs for a few days to allow both space for last-minute dialogue and time for the organization of a public rally turned out to be the right move on both counts. It is the kind of strategic thinking Sheinbaum will need in spades in the days and weeks ahead."

https://jacobin.com/2025/03/mexico-sheinbaum-trump-tariffs-popularity

#Mexico #USA #Tariffs #Trump #Sheinbaum #Tariffs #TradeWar