Mexico’s President Denies Deal To Close Borders With US Amid Tariff Threats

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has appeared to dispute President-elect Donald Trump’s claim that the two had reached an agreement to stop migration to the U.S. border.

After a phone call on Wednesday, Trump tweeted: “She has agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”

In response, Sheinbaum quickly clarified that Mexico’s position remained unchanged: the country would not close its borders but would work to manage migration while upholding human rights.

Earlier in the week, Trump had caused concern among U.S. trading partners by announcing plans to impose a 25% tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada, and a 10% tariff on China, once he assumes office in January. He stated that the tariffs on Mexico and Canada would only be lifted when illegal immigration and drug trafficking into the U.S. are fully stopped. Meanwhile, China would face tariffs until it took action against fentanyl smuggling.

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Sheinbaum responded to Trump’s tariff threats, warning that Mexico would retaliate if trade barriers were put in place. “If there are US tariffs, Mexico would also raise tariffs,” she said during a press conference.

Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who was present at the conference, criticized Trump’s proposed tariffs, calling them damaging and stating that they would violate the USMCA trade agreement, which Trump himself negotiated in 2018 between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.

Despite this, Sheinbaum had initially described the phone call with Trump as “an excellent conversation” in a post on X, leading to some confusion over the two leaders’ differing statements on the issue.

“We discussed Mexico’s strategy on the migration phenomenon and I shared that [migrant] caravans are not arriving at the northern border because they are being taken care of in Mexico.”

Trump later took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to offer a slightly different interpretation of what had been agreed during their conversation.

“Mexico will stop people from going to our Southern Border, effective immediately,” he wrote.

Sheinbaum later went back on X to say that she had “explained to him [Trump] the comprehensive strategy that Mexico has followed to address the migration phenomenon, respecting human rights”.

“We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders but to build bridges between governments and between peoples,” she added.

Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held an emergency meeting on Wednesday with 10 provincial premiers to discuss how to respond to Trump’s tariff threat.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said afterwards that the federal government and the premiers had agreed to present a united front on the issue.

There were signs of division, however, as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith expressed concern about whether Trudeau was the best person to negotiate with the incoming US president.

She told CBC: “I don’t think we should underestimate the personal animus between these two leaders.

“And if he’s [Trudeau] not the right person to have at the negotiation table, we need to make sure that the right person is.”

Mainland China authorities have yet to comment directly on the 10% tariff promised by Trump.

But a Chinese embassy official in Washington has said no-one will win a trade war.

Illegal immigration became a defining issue in the 2024 White House election race that culminated in Trump’s resounding victory this month. He campaigned on a promise to seal the US-Mexico border.

After an unprecedented influx of millions of undocumented immigrants became politically toxic for Democrats, outgoing US President Joe Biden introduced restrictions during this election cycle that sharply reduced illegal crossings.

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Under US diplomatic pressure, Mexico has been conducting its largest ever migrant crackdown, bussing and flying non-Mexican migrants to the country’s south, far from the US border.

The practice wears out the exhausted migrants, leaving them without funds to continue their journey.

Thousands have been so defeated by repeated experiences of this kind of so-called internal deportation, that they have voluntarily requested to be deported to their home nations.

When Trump takes office he will inherit a situation in which fewer undocumented migrants are being apprehended at the US southern border than at any other time over the past four years.

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