Mexico is bracing for a new Trump presidency after years of threats

Nov. 7, 2024 2 AM PT

Donald Trump’s win — with his proposals on tariffs, immigration and combating drug trafficking — is sending shock waves through Mexico.
“We’re already at a very fragile point. Now Trump is coming to hit us some more,” one economist said. “We really, really, didn’t need this.”
Tariffs could devastate the economy. So could the mass deportations he’s vowed: Immigrants in the U.S. send $60 billion back to Mexico each year.

MEXICO CITY — The election of Donald Trump — whose campaign featured incendiary proposals on tariffs, immigration and combating drug trafficking — is sending shock waves through Mexico, a nation with close economic, social and cultural ties to its northern neighbor.

The president-elect’s vows to impose steep taxes on goods imported from Mexico — up to 100% or more on vehicles — is viewed as a profound threat in a nation heavily dependent on trade with the United States.

“It’s a disaster,” Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid, an economics professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said of Trump’s election. “I mean, it couldn’t be worse.”

Mexico’s economy — driven almost exclusively by trade, with more than 80% of exports sent north of the border — is already on the brink of recession after years of sluggish growth, said Moreno-Brid.

The peso slumped to a two-year low Wednesday against the dollar amid fears that Trump will follow through on his tariff pronouncements.

“We should take seriously the threats and promises of Trump,” Martha Bárcena, a former Mexican ambassador to Washington, wrote Wednesday on the social media platform X. “It’s not just campaign rhetoric.”

Economists had warned that even a small rise in tariffs on Mexico’s goods could lead to more unemployment and poverty, potentially leading more people to migrate to the United States.

“We’re already at a very fragile point. Now Trump is coming to hit us some more,” Moreno-Brid said. “ We really, really, didn’t need this.”

The landmark United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement — which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement during the first Trump administration — is up for review in 2026. What revisions Trump will seek remain unclear, but the multitrillion-dollar accord is pivotal to Mexico’s economy.

Three politicians sit side-by-side at an ornate table after signing a trade pact.

The hope among many in Mexico is that, once in office, Trump’s actions will prove less harsh than his campaign bombast. Eight years ago, Trump launched his election bid denouncing Mexican immigrants as criminals and “rapists,” but later developed a close working relationship with Andrés Manuel López Obrador when the leftist gained the presidency. The two men referred to each other as friends.

Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, on Wednesday aimed to downplay worries. “There’s no reason to be worried,” Sheinbaum, López Obrador’s successor, told reporters. “There’s going to be dialogue.”

The two nations have closely integrated supply chains that, experts say, could put a brake on Trump’s provocative tariff plans. U.S. companies have ownership control or other financial stakes in many Mexican manufacturing firms.

“In economic matters, pragmatism dominates United States’ interests,” columnist Kimberly Armengol wrote Wednesday in Mexico’s Excélsior newspaper. “The interests of the United States with respect to Mexico transcend party divisions.”

Two-way trade between the United States and Mexico topped $800 billion last year, according to U.S. figures, making Mexico the United States’ leading trade partner.

Cars cross the Paso del Norte international bridge at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We are going to keep working in a very important way with business leaders in Mexico and those in the United States, who have their investments in Mexico,” said Sheinbaum. “In this case there are no differences — on the contrary there is a lot of unity to strengthen the national economy.”

Trump has suggested that tariffs would also be part of his strategy to crack down on drug trafficking.

“We will immediately stop the drugs pouring across our border,” Trump told a crowd Monday in Pittsburgh. “Every damn thing that they sell into the United States is going to have like a 25% [tariff], until they stop drugs from coming in. And let me tell you something, those drugs will stop so damn fast that your head will spin.”

In addition, Trump has raised the possibility of deploying the U.S. military to take down Mexican drug cartels — a notion widely rejected in a nation that has suffered several historical invasions from the north. Many in Mexico don’t take the military deployment idea seriously.

“He’s saying that just to make noise,” said Alejandro Vázquez, a bookseller in Mexico City who was asked about Trump’s plans. “It’s a publicity stunt.”

On immigration, Trump has made it clear that he will move to curtail pathways to migration, likely scrapping the CBP One smartphone app. That program has allowed more than 800,000 asylum seekers from across the globe to enter the United States with provisional status after interviews at U.S. border posts.

Also likely on the chopping block in the new Trump administration is a humanitarian parole program that Biden put in place for citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, as well as a program that allows Central American children to seek refugee status in the United States, according to Adam Isacson, a border researcher at the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank.

Trump may also use the threat of tariffs to revive the Remain in Mexico program, which required asylum seekers to stay in Mexico until their dates in U.S. immigration courts.

Some observers have predicted an upsurge in migration in the coming months. This week, more than 2,000 migrants launched a northbound “caravan” from Mexico’s southern city of Tapachula.

“We can expect an increase in migration over the next few months as people seek to get to U.S. soil before the new administration starts closing down existing pathways,” Isacson said.

Meantime, many in Mexico were worried about Trump’s vows to deport millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, many of them Mexican nationals.

“Trump can do whatever he wants now. He has all the support he needs” said Irineo Mujica, who heads People Without Borders, a migrant advocacy group. “Migrants are going to be running to the border to get in before Trump takes over.”

Apart from the humanitarian toll, mass deportations could devastate the Mexican economy: Each year, immigrants in the United States ship some $60 billion back to relatives and others in Mexico. Those remittances represent a pillar of the Mexican economy.

“He can’t send all the Mexicans back from the United States, can he?” asked Emi Pérez, a street vendor in the capital. “Who’s going to do all the work in the United States if there are no Mexicans?”

Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.