United States President Donald Trump and his political agenda continued to be the focus of reporters’ questions for President Claudia Sheinbaum at her Friday morning press conference.

Sheinbaum also responded to a question about an apparently baseless accusation that Elon Musk amplified by sharing it with his 214 million followers on X, the social media platform he owns.

Lawyers studying potential impact of terrorist designation for cartels 

Sheinbaum noted that Trump’s executive order on the designation of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations “establishes a period for analysis” about whether in fact criminal organizations — and which — should be designated as such.

“In the case of a … [cartel] being defined as a terrorist organization, what would be the consequences of this definition? We have a team of lawyers doing an analysis on the different implications that might have,” she said.

Sheinbaum stressed that her government is already “combating” cartels, and reiterated that what Mexico wants is security “collaboration and coordination” with the United States.

“Unilateral decisions don’t help, what helps is collaboration,” she said.

After Trump declared last month that he would designate Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, Sheinbaum said that Mexico would never accept any interventionist actions, such as the use of the U.S. military on Mexican soil.

No trade war on the horizon, says Sheinbaum 

A reporter noted that World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said Thursday that tit-for-tat trade wars triggered by tariffs Trump has threatened to impose on exports from various countries including Mexico would have a “catastrophic” impact on global economic growth.

“I don’t see a trade war,” Sheinbaum said, even though she indicated late last year that if Trump imposed a 25% tariff on Mexican exports — as he has pledged to do — Mexico would place a reciprocal tariff on U.S. exports.

“Yesterday he spoke in a different way about Mexico,” she said, referring to Trump’s remarks via video-link to the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Responding to questions after his address, the United States president said that the U.S. is “dealing with Mexico, I think, very well.”

“… We just want to be treated fairly with other nations,” said Trump, who has railed against the large trade deficit the United States has with Mexico.

Sheinbaum asserted that Trump uses tariffs (or threatens to use tariffs) for economic reasons and as a negotiating tool — as appeared to be the case in 2019 when he threatened to impose a 5% blanket tariff on Mexican exports to pressure the Mexican government to do more to stem illegal immigration to the United States.

The U.S. president said Monday that his administration could impose a 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian exports to the United States on Feb. 1 because Mexico and Canada are allowing “vast numbers of people” and fentanyl to enter the U.S.

Trump previously said that the tariffs would remain in effect “until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!”

Sheinbaum: Carlos Slim not under investigation for cartel links 

A reporter highlighted that Elon Musk shared a post on X that accused Mexico’s richest person, Carlos Slim, of having “significant ties” to Mexican drug cartels.

Musk, the owner of X, Tesla and other companies, shared a post from the Wall Street Mav account. The post said that Slim “is a Mexican billionaire worth over $70 billion” and erroneously claimed that he is “the largest shareholder in publicly traded shares of The New York Times.” (He previously was.)

“He also is known to have significant ties to the drug cartels in Mexico. You don’t become a billionaire in Mexico without being part of the network that is controlled and protected,” the post said.

Sheinbaum flatly dismissed the accusation.

“First, it’s false. There is no investigation against the businessman Carlos Slim or his companies. So where do they get that from?” she said.

“Second, Mexico is a magnificent country and we’re not going to allow it to be labeled or associated with drug trafficking, as they’ve done in a lot of the [television] series,” Sheinbaum said.