Mexico – USA: A Relationship That Withstands Everything?
Mexico distances itself from Washington in its regional diplomacy while making common cause with its powerful neighbor on vital bilateral agenda issues
By Rafael Rojas (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – Recently, Mexico’s Secretary of the Economy, Marcelo Ebrard, appeared before both chambers of the federal Congress. There, he reiterated the strategy contained in Plan Mexico, the core of the domestic and foreign policy of the government of Claudia Sheinbaum and the so-called “second floor” of the Fourth Transformation, as the government of Morena describes the process initiated by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in 2018. Anyone reading that plan must admit that its central objective is none other than the continuity and strengthening of Mexico’s integration with North America.
Before Ebrard’s presentation, Foreign Minister Juan Ramon de la Fuente and President Sheinbaum received the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, in Mexico City. In those meetings, the Mexican government reaffirmed that its priority is to achieve the least possible exposure to US tariffs, increase collaboration on migration control, border security, and combating drug trafficking, and emerge unscathed from the review of the USMCA (Mexico–United States–Canada Agreement) scheduled for the Northern Hemisphere’s summer of 2026.
The fact that North American integration is the Sheinbaum government’s top priority does not prevent ideological perceptions from becoming increasingly contradictory. Certain gestures aim to balance its relationship with Washington, such as increasing energy subsidies to Cuba, rejecting the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, or announcing the president’s absence from the Summit of the Americas in the Dominican Republic due to the exclusion of Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba.
For government supporters, expressed through an increasingly vast pro-government media network, these gestures demonstrate that the doctrine of “Mexican humanism” guides Sheinbaum’s foreign policy. For the opposition they are evidence that Morena is not pursuing integration with Canada and the United States, but rather the alignment of Mexico’s political system with the Cuban or Venezuelan models (which, by the way, differ from each other). Curiously, the indulgence and paternalism with which the Lopez Obrador and Sheinbaum governments treat Caribbean authoritarian regimes is perceived by both sides as a coherent project in one direction or another, rather than as a form of ideological compensation.
However, Morena’s most criticized policies in democratic terms—such as the proposal for the direct popular election of the judiciary or the planned electoral reform supposedly contrary to proportional representation—do not seem inspired by Cuba or Venezuela, nor do they gravitate toward those regimes. The first, if anything, evokes the Bolivian experience, considered disastrous by many within Bolivia’s own socialist and Indigenous left, while the second hardly aligns with countries where multiparty competition has been eliminated or severely curtailed.
What the Mexico Plan proposes is greater integration with the United States and Canada, a deregulated economy, exploitation of nearshoring, accelerated investment growth, and the transformation of Mexico into one of the world’s ten largest capitalist economies and one of the five leading international tourist destinations. It does not need to state it explicitly, but Plan Mexico leaves aside any attempt to push for international diversification of trade and investment, particularly re-engagement with China and Southeast Asia.
It also avoids any alignment with the BRICS project (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) or a privileged relationship with Brazil or other democratic left governments in Latin America, as demanded by reformist sectors. The current government’s global strategy—described by Rafael Velazquez, Luz Araceli Gonzalez Uresti, and Jorge A. Schiavon in a dossier for Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica—continues to support the trade war against China (in September tariffs on Chinese automobiles, auto parts, and textiles were raised to 50%) while neglecting ties with Europe and Latin America.
The strong commitment to bilateralism between the United States and Mexico has had to endure supposedly antithetical leaders such as Trump and Lopez Obrador–Sheinbaum, as well as the intense pro-Bolivarian lobbying within Morena. President Sheinbaum not only had to put on a friendly face and receive Rubio, but Foreign Minister De la Fuente had to listen in silence as the US Secretary of State defended drone attacks on Venezuelan vessels in the Caribbean and declared that such actions “would happen again.”
The solid bilateral bond appears to survive all of this and more specific pressures, such as Mexico’s opposition to the US trade embargo on Cuba. President Sheinbaum has repeatedly stated—correctly—that energy subsidies to the island and the hiring of Cuban doctors, the two operations that constitute the bulk of ties with Havana, do not threaten the most important link between Mexico and Washington. Eighty percent of Mexico’s foreign trade is with the United States. Latin American countries such as Brazil, Chile, Peru, or Colombia account for less than 0.7%. Trade with Cuba lies far below those regional indicators, making it practically negligible within Mexico’s economic exchange. The greatest US pressure on Mexico does not target these compensatory links, but rather demands concessions of sovereignty in areas such as security, migration control, and the fight against organized crime.
The autonomy Mexico loses in these areas is compensated for with statements in favor of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela during the morning press conferences (the “mañaneras” made popular by Lopez Obrador) and with mechanical reiterations of the principle of national self-determination—none of which alters the fundamentally bilateralist core of Mexican foreign policy.
In Sheinbaum’s first year in office, more than 26 drug traffickers from the Sinaloa, Jalisco New Generation, and Northeast cartels have been extradited to the United States. The same occurred with Chinese fentanyl kingpin Zhi Dong Zhang, known as Brother Wang, who fled Mexico and was arrested in Cuba before being delivered by the Mexican government to its northern neighbor. Mexico has also contained migration flows across its borders and the caravans of migrants from Central America and the Caribbean.
During this first year, the Sheinbaum government has obtained, in exchange, four tariff postponements from the United States—each celebrated as a diplomatic victory. For the current Morena administration, perceived by many of its allies in Europe and Latin America as a “national-popular” model in the region, securing yet another pause on tariffs while Trump freezes negotiations with Canada is a point of pride.
Nevertheless, bilateralism—the priority of Mexican foreign policy—must contend with obstacles on several simultaneous fronts. At times these arise directly from the neo-protectionist core of the Trump administration, such as the recent boycott of airlines operating at Felipe Ángeles Airport, a flagship Lopez Obrador project. Other times they stem from immediate domestic realities.
The underlying US pressure on Mexico to adopt a more energetic anti-drug strategy means that any security breach can be used to foment conflict with Washington. The recent assassination of Uruapan’s mayor, Carlos Manzo, illustrates these dynamics clearly. The crime was seized upon by the White House and by the Mexican opposition to allege complicity between the Sheinbaum administration and drug trafficking.
Whenever he can, President Trump repeats the claim that “Mexico is controlled by drug traffickers.” But since the Lopez Obrador era—when he presented himself as a friend of Trump—Mexican authorities have learned not to give excessive weight to the US president’s statements. This is a tactic of rational denial or deliberate underestimation, serving defensive functions: it frees Mexico from the obligation to respond to every aggressive statement by Trump and avoids contributing to a climate of verbal sparring with the United States on social media, such as the one that dominates Washington’s relations with Cuba or Venezuela.
For seven years of left-wing government, Mexico has rigorously avoided that confrontational style in its dealings with the White House. Now, that negotiating disposition faces its greatest challenge: military operations against vessels in the Caribbean and the Pacific, which already number 16, with nearly 70 fatalities. President Sheinbaum has declared her opposition to the attacks, though not as forcefully as Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, and at the end of October requested a meeting with Ambassador Ronald Johnson.
However, after Sheinbaum’s statements, Foreign Minister De la Fuente and Navy Secretary Raymundo Morales met with Ambassador Johnson and agreed to deepen “maritime cooperation” and “strengthen bilateral coordination” in that area. Thus, following the most recent attacks in the Mexican Pacific, the final response has been a greater Mexican commitment to the punitive line promoted by the United States—and supposedly opposed by the Morena government.
The president’s phrase describing her approach to relations with the United States—“we cooperate and coordinate, but we do not subordinate ourselves”—in strictly bilateral terms reserves the last verb only for certain media postures during the morning conferences. The more substantive aspects of non-subordination, however, are deferred to other areas of foreign policy, especially in relations with Latin America and the Caribbean. The recent granting of asylum to Peru’s former prime minister Betssy Chávez—like the asylum Lopez Obrador previously granted to former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas, arrested by Ecuadorian police inside the Mexican embassy, and to Bolivia’s former president Evo Morales—is another way in which the Mexican government attempts to ideologically balance its military collaboration with the United States.
The regional logic of this case-by-case policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean—maintaining a prudent distance from the progressive or democratic left bloc (Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay), supporting Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, and opposing certain right-wing governments, particularly in the Andean region—cannot be understood without Mexico’s understanding with the Trump administration. Mexico distances itself from Washington in its regional diplomacy while making common cause with its powerful neighbor on the vital issues of the bilateral agenda.
Published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.