Donald Trump has sent world leaders scrambling with his plans for stiff tariffs on imports and recent assertations that the U.S. should take over or take control of various countries, territories and landmarks — but Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, doesn’t seem to be taking the bait.
Sheinbaum took a swipe at the president-elect on her daily press briefing broadcast Wednesday morning, giving a sarcastic history lesson directed at Trump after he proposed the Gulf of Mexico be renamed to Gulf of America.
Standing before a global map, and alongside former culture minister Jose Alfonso Suarez del Real, Sheinbaum proposed dryly that North America should be renamed “América Mexicana,” or “Mexican America,” because a founding document dating from 1814 that preceded Mexico’s constitution referred to it that way.
“That sounds nice, no?” she added with a sarcastic tone. She also noted that the Gulf of Mexico had been named that way since 1607.
“The fact is that Mexican America is recognized since the 17th century… as the name for the whole northern part of the (American) continent,” Suarez del Real chimed in, demonstrating the area on the map.
The exchange has started to answer a larger question lingering over the relationship between the two countries: How newly elected Sheinbaum will handle Trump’s strong-handed diplomatic approach, and promises of mass deportations and crippling taxes on trading partners like Mexico.
“Humour can be a good tactic, it projects strength, which is what Trump responds to. It was probably the right choice on this issue,” Brian Winter, vice president of the New York-based Council of the Americas, told The Associated Press about Sheinbaum’s choice of rebuttal. “Although President Sheinbaum knows it won’t work on everything — Trump and his administration will demand serious engagement from Mexico on the big issues of immigration, drugs and trade.”
It comes after other stern but collaborative responses by Sheinbaum regarding Trump’s proposals.
On Trump’s pitch to slap 25 per cent tariffs on Mexican imports, Sheinbaum warned that if the new U.S. administration imposes tariffs on Mexico, her administration would respond with similar measures. She said any sort of tax was “not acceptable and would cause inflation and job losses for the United States and Mexico.”
She’s taken a more concessionary tone on immigration, falling in line with years of Mexican efforts to block migrants from travelling north amid mounting pressure by the U.S.
After originally saying her government would push the Trump administration to deport migrants directly back to their own countries, in January she said Mexico would be open to accepting deportees from other countries, but Mexico could limit it to certain nationalities or request compensation.
Trump floated the idea of renaming the Gulf of Mexico, which stretches from Florida to Mexico’s Cancun, in a Tuesday press conference in which he presented a broad expansionist agenda including the possibility of taking control of the Panama Canal and Greenland.
He also said he could use economic levers to push Canada toward becoming part of the United States, while also once again raising issues with the trade deficit and saying the U.S. doesn’t need to buy Canadian lumber, dairy or automobiles.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to Trump’s comments on Tuesday by saying, “there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.”
“Workers and communities in both our countries benefit from being each other’s biggest trading and security partner,” Trudeau added in a social media post.
— With files from Reuters and The Associated Press