All through 2025, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum was known as a “Trump whisperer” for her capability to assuage tensions between her nation and america every time they risked worsening on account of calls for or threats issued by President Donald Trump. But only a month into 2026, this yr is proving to be much more difficult than the final.
In January 2025, one week after Trump returned to the White Home for a second nonconsecutive time period, he threatened to considerably enhance tariffs on all items imported from Mexico, purportedly on account of issues over immigration and fentanyl trafficking. Sheinbaum, who speaks fluent English and did her doctoral analysis at Lawrence Berkeley Nationwide Laboratory in California, known as Trump and received him over by promising to ship 10,000 Mexican troops to raised implement safety on the U.S.-Mexico border. Following the decision, Trump praised Sheinbaum, admiringly describing her as “powerful.”
The actual fact that there have been already properly over 10,000 Mexican troops deployed alongside the border for varied missions—together with to counter immigration and drug-trafficking— mattered little. Sheinbaum’s authorities made an enormous present of dispatching just a few planeloads of navy personnel to varied border cities. Trump dropped his risk for just a few weeks. And Sheinbaum received a political win at residence for dodging an early commerce warfare with Washington.
