The US dollar-Mexican peso exchange rate. The size of the Mexican economy. The federal government’s plan to receive deportees from the United States. A recent New York Times’ dispatch from “inside a Sinaloa Cartel fentanyl lab.”
They were among the topics President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke about at her first morning press conference of 2025, held at the National Palace this Thursday Jan. 2.
Sheinbaum predicts exchange rate will stabilize after Trump takes office
Sheinbaum noted that the peso has depreciated against the US dollar since she was sworn in as president on Oct. 1.
“Among other things, it’s due to uncertainty in the United States and the changes in the [interest] rate of the Fed,” she said.
“We expect that once President Trump takes office, we’ll enter a period of stabilization,” Sheinbaum said.
The president presented data that showed that the peso depreciated less against the US dollar in the final three months of 2024 than several other currencies including the Japanese yen, the euro, the British pound and the Canadian dollar.
The data showed that the peso depreciated 5.8% against the greenback in the period, while the yen fell 9.5%, the euro declined 7.5%, the pound dropped 6.8% and the Canadian dollar dipped 6.3%.
“Look at the depreciation of other currencies so that you don’t say it’s a Mexico issue. It’s an international issue,” Sheinbaum said.
The peso is “among the currencies that had the lowest depreciation,” she added.
The Bank of Mexico’s closing USD:MXN rate on Thursday was just under 20.62.
Mexico ‘still the 12th largest economy in the world’
Sheinbaum also presented 2023 World Bank data that showed that Mexico was the 12th largest economy in the world, behind the United States, China, Germany, Japan, India, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Brazil, Canada and Russia.
“We’re still the 12th largest economy in the world, … above Spain, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, Netherlands, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland,” she said, mentioning the countries ranked 13th to 20th based on the size of their economy.
The data Sheinbaum presented showed that Mexico had a GDP of US $1.789 trillion in 2023, equivalent to 1.7% of global GDP.
Plan to receive deportees during second Trump administration is ‘ready,’ says Sheinbaum
Asked about the progress that has been made in terms of preparing for the possible mass deportation of Mexicans from the United States during Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. president, Sheinbaum said that the government already has a “very elaborate plan.”
“… We already have it ready,” she stressed, adding that the government is waiting to see what happens vis-à-vis deportations before presenting the plan.
“But everything is prepared,” Sheinbaum said, adding that states all over the country will have a role in the plan’s execution.
The government is not just working with the border states but with entities all over the republic, she said.
“If a compatriot arrives to Mexico at the border, it’s very probable that he or she will want to go to their place of origin,” she said.
Government seeks to debunk NYT fentanyl report
Three days after Sheinbaum declared that a New York Times report about fentanyl production in Sinaloa “is not very credible,” no fewer than three other government officials sought to explain why the report is not grounded in truth.
A central focus of the officials — the director of health agency IMSS-Bienestar, the director of health regulator Cofepris and a precursor chemicals specialist with the Mexican Navy — was the Times’ suggestion that fentanyl cooks could develop a tolerance to the synthetic opioid.
Referring to a conversation with two alleged fentanyl cooks at a Sinaloa Cartel lab in Culiacán, reporters for the Times, who said they wore “gas masks and hazmat suits” to the lab, wrote:
“While one sniff of the toxic chemicals could kill us, they explained, they had built up a tolerance to the lethal drug.”
Cofepris director Armida Zúñiga Estrada told reporters on Thursday that “there is no evidence of tolerance of this substance.”
Similarly, navy chemicals analyst Juana Peñaloza Ibarra said “there is no scientific evidence that supports the idea” that a person can build up a “tolerance to the lethal drug.”
For his part, IMSS-Bienestar director Alejandro Svarch Pérez said that if cooks shown in the Times’ report had really been producing fentanyl, they would have fallen down unconscious in 30 seconds due to “the vapors” emitted from “the synthesis of fentanyl.”
The cooks were wearing face masks but were not using any professional protective equipment.
To produce fentanyl, “a laboratory where the conditions of exposure can be controlled is required,” Svarch said, adding that “specialized equipment” and “professional ventilation systems” are also needed.
Fentanyl can’t be made in “a domestic kitchen, as the report shows,” he said.
“It is not possible to make fentanyl in the way referred to in the article,” Svarch added.
Sheinbaum said on Monday that fentanyl is not produced in the way the Times’ photographs demonstrate, and suggested that the cooks were actually making methamphetamine.
On Thursday she said that “if there was [such a thing as] tolerance to the lethal drug, there wouldn’t be the deaths due to fentanyl that there [currently] are in the United States.”
In pointing out alleged falsehoods in The New York Times report, Sheinbaum said that the government was “defending the right to information, to veracity” and committed her administration to “denouncing” inaccurate reporting in the future.
After the president questioned the credibility of the Times’ article earlier this week, the newspaper said it was “completely confident” in its reporting on fentanyl production in Mexico.
Sheinbaum’s rejection of the newspaper’s reporting continues a practice of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was an outspoken critic of the Mexican and international press during his presidency.
Whether the Times’ Dec. 29 report really shows fentanyl cooks in a fentanyl lab or not, the fact remains that large quantities of the synthetic opioid are made in Mexico (using precursor chemicals from China) and illegally shipped to the United States.
The Mexican government’s willingness and capacity (or lack thereof) to reduce the flow of fentanyl — and migrants — to the United States looks set to be a defining factor in the health of the Sheinbaum administration’s relationship with the U.S. government led by Trump. In November, the president-elect pledged to impose a 25% tariff on all Mexican and Canadian exports on the first day of his second term due to what he called the “long simmering problem” of drugs and migrants illegally entering the U.S. from the country’s southern and northern neighbors.
By Mexico News Daily chief staff writer Peter Davies ([email protected])
