Saturday, February 15, 2025

Sheinbaum: ‘We will always defend our sovereignty’ following Trump’s border declaration

In response to the initial actions taken by U.S. President Donald Trump on his first day in office, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday said she will maintain “a cool head” and respond ”step by step.”

Following his inauguration as the 47th U.S. president on Monday, Trump issued a flurry of executive orders, five of which directly impact Mexico, according to the newspaper La Jornada. 

Trump declared a national emergency at its border with Mexico, signed an executive order that could result in Mexican drug cartels being designated as terrorist organizations, and suggested he could apply an across-the-board 25% duty on Mexican goods beginning in February.

Flanked by her foreign and interior ministers at her Tuesday morning press conference, Sheinbaum assured the Mexican public that she will protect Mexico’s interests while also pursuing dialogue with Trump amid the border alarm.

“Regarding the decrees that President Donald Trump signed yesterday, I would like to say the following: The people of Mexico can be sure that we will always defend our sovereignty and our independence,” she said, according to the news agency Reuters.

In recent weeks, Sheinbaum has said Mexico could retaliate to U.S. tariffs with tariffs of its own, but she declined to respond in kind on Tuesday.

“It’s always important to have a cool head,” she said, declaring she would insist on respectful relations while trying to avoid confrontations.

Julio Ruiz, chief economist for Mexico at Citigroup investment bank, told Reuters that Sheinbaum is attempting to calm things down and separate concrete actions from political rhetoric.

“One thing is what’s already signed, and another is these casual comments,” he said. “You have to distinguish between those two things, and … she’s trying to give that message to the market and to the population in general.”

With reports from Reuters and La Jornada

18 COMMENTS

  1. We are fortunate to have such a calm steady hand leading the nation at this challenging time. Also it is important to remember that politicians can try to divide us and encourage divisions, but we do not have to see eachother as enemies, but friends with different points of view. No matter the outcomes we must not devolve into racist hatred towards foreign guests in our country over political actions.

  2. Clearly the actions of That Man do not reflect the beliefs of all of us in the United States. Hopefully Mexico and its people can weather this storm of hatred and paranoia that is being dumped upon us by the Billionaire Class.

  3. Sheinbaum is doing a great job in Mexico. Please don’t everyone slit their throats because he has closed our border to illegals. Can you tell me what’s wrong with that? Come to America correctly and everything will be cool. and he’s not going at Mexican citizens who are working in the USA illegally he’s going after criminals convicts and more that have come across the border. It remains to be seen what will happen with the Mexicans, who are working tirelessly in America and are not legal, but I can’t imagine that we would remove them without giving them the option to become USA citizens. this is not about Mexican individuals who are honest and working. This is about criminals.

    • Ok you keep telling yourself that! We can revise your comment when he starts ripping people out of schools and their place of work. He’s not just talking about criminals. They may be first on his list but that’s not where it will end. If it was just about criminals, why did he sign an executive order taking away birth right citizenship? The man is evil! So glad Mexico has Sheinbaum with a cool head. She will need to be tough with Trump because he hates women and he will do everything he can to intimidate her. But I have faith that she will remain strong!

  4. So I share a personal conversation with my wife. The same type of conversation is happening all over the USA today within Mexican families. I said that I hope that the people here do not begin to discriminate against us. She said: “Well, it will be OK for me because I am a Canadian.” Think about this. If anger grows here because of the bad treatment of our people up north then racism and xenophobia will follow here. No subtle distinction will apply whether naturalized citizen, permanent resident, visitor, Canadian, English, North American and all with light skin will be lumped together. If it grows, then some INE agents will also begin to act upon that hatred and xenophobia. So will many others, just like is already beginning in the USA. I hope that the inate kindness and tolerance of the population at large does not waver.

  5. Trump lacks complete comprehension of how trade tariffs cause inflation in USA. It is the US consumer of a mexican product that pays the increased costs from the US IMPORTER, who must pay US TREASURY UPON ARRIVAL and retailer who pays. This ocurred in his first term and inflation. US farmers Lost billions as their foreign buyers found new eager foreign suppliers such as Brasil. A trade tariff is a double sword against US economy

  6. The second significant Trump ignorance besides trade tariffs is the impact of labor shortage Look around You; constructón,.infrastructure, farming, manufacturing, childcare, public works, service industry, healthcare and so on, can no longer rely on Anglo Saxon lineage or ability to work as hard as young mexican labor. The USA is no longer a standalone geopolitical nation The political supremacists cannot tolerate the factual truth

    • An estimated 11 million immigrants live in the US without authorization. Contrary to some claims, they pay a considerable amount in taxes. Some estimates suggest undocumented immigrants paid nearly $100 billion in federal,

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      DANIEL SUSSKIND
      A Sputnik moment, but has China really outsmarted the US on AI?
      Like the Cold War space race before it, the sudden rise of DeepSeek has shocked the West. How did China steal a march, asks an Oxford expert
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      ILLUSTRATION BY TONY BELL
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      When the Cold War began in the 1950s, the United States believed it had technological supremacy over the Soviet Union. But when the USSR surprised the world in 1957 by launching the first satellite — Sputnik — into space, the West panicked.

      During the “Sputnik crisis” that followed, President Eisenhower’s popularity wobbled. He warned that the Soviets had surpassed the US and his country must now respond with “resourcefulness and vigour”. The space race started, with both countries furiously competing for dominance of the stars.

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      Until last week, America was similarly convinced of its own AI supremacy. Before the emergence of China’s new DeepSeek chatbot — which blindsided Silicon Valley — most US experts thought they had a fairly comfortable lead in the battle to build an all-powerful system known as “artificial general intelligence” or AGI.

      “China now lags the United States … by at least a year, and may be falling further behind,” The New York Times said last year. “Silicon Valley is definitely well ahead of the game,” said Jenny Xiao, a leading San Francisco tech investor, in March.

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      America’s mistake, it seems, was to believe that by depriving China of advanced silicon chips, restricting its supply through an embargo, its rival would lack the processing power to compete. But now there are fears this strategy may have backfired. DeepSeek, forced to make far more effective use of its limited chips, was driven to innovate — and may have improved the design of their algorithm as a result.

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