Why Mexico will find it tough to heed Trump’s calls to tame the cartels
Donald Trump has accused the cartels of killing tens of thousands of Americans. Now Mexico will be forced to confront its greatest weakness.
President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to slap a 25 per cent tariff on Mexico’s goods unless it stops fentanyl trafficking and illegal migration risks setting the trade partners on a collision course over an intractable challenge for both countries.
Ahead of the new trade negotiations, Mexico’s greatest weakness has been its historic inability to confront the powerful drug gangs that control about a third of the country. Mexico has had success stopping immigration over the past year, but ending drug smuggling might be an impossible ask, in part because of strong demand in the U.S.
Fentanyl is cheap to produce and easily smuggled. In some large areas of Mexico, organised crime groups dominate local and state officials. Different attempts to fight the gangs, sometimes with U.S. support, have led to violence at home without making any dents on the drug business.
Under former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Mexican government largely shied away from a strategy of direct confrontation with the country’s criminal organisations and tried to address the inequality and poverty that he said was the reason for the violence. The strategy, known as “hugs, not bullets” failed to stem the flow of drugs to the U.S. as well as the violence in Mexico.
His successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office last month, will face domestic pressure not to capitulate to Trump’s threats. “We negotiate as equals, there is no subordination here,” she said Tuesday.
Trump’s threat of imposing what would amount to economic sanctions on its largest trading partner without a bilateral strategy to deal with the powerful drug gangs can only add volatility to an already fraught relationship. Bilateral co-operation would be an opportunity for both countries, but unilateral action by the U.S. will be seen as a threat by Mexico, said Eduardo Guerrero, a Mexico City security consultant.
“Of the three issues up for negotiation, migration, trade and security, security is the most complex,” Guerrero said. “It can be seen as a threat because it can affect Mexico’s territorial sovereignty. It is a historical issue.” Sheinbaum’s response comes as more Republicans in recent months have joined Trump in proposing increasingly drastic measures such as U.S. military action in Mexico against drug cartels.
“We don’t produce the weapons, we don’t consume the synthetic drugs, but unfortunately, we are the ones who suffer the deaths due to crime in response to the drug demand from your country,” Sheinbaum said, reading from a letter addressed to Trump that will be delivered Wednesday.
Security is a bigger problem for Mexico’s relationship with the U.S. than China or immigration, said Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister and expert on the bilateral relationship.
He questioned whether Sheinbaum’s response would be successful with Trump. “They clearly are not prepared for this and are simply lecturing Americans, something that most Americans detest,” he added.
Trump’s tariff threats and Sheinbaum’s response raise the risk that “some miscalculation on one or both parts, in terms of the rhetoric, could slip out of control,” said Craig Deare, who served early in Trump’s first administration as senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council. “The long-term costs will greatly exceed the short-term benefit.” Even the prospect of U.S. military action would upset the sensitive security partnership that both countries rely on, current and former U.S. officials say.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump promised to take down Mexico’s powerful cartels, which the U.S. holds responsible for smuggling most of the fentanyl that has killed tens of thousands of Americans — comparing them to the Islamic terror group ISIS.
“It’s now time for America to wage war on the cartels,” Trump said. Then-President López Obrador said Mexico wouldn’t “allow any foreign government to intervene in our territory, much less let a government’s armed forces intervene.” However, he was able to establish a working relationship and develop personal affinity with Trump.
In 2019, Trump said he would impose tariffs of 25% on all imported goods from Mexico unless the government took measures to curb the flow of migrants to the U.S. border. Mexico buckled to Trump’s pressure and deployed thousands of National Guard members to contain the migration wave. This time, the playbook might not work, security experts say.
Unilateral U.S. military action would plunge relations between the two countries into an unprecedented crisis imperilling the deep economic and security partnership the once mutually suspicious neighbours have built over the last three decades.
“If we think things are bad in terms of drugs and immigration, now intervene in Mexico and watch what happens,” said Deare, the former Trump administration official. “You can launch a hundred, a thousand drone strikes. And our demand is going to ensure the continued flow of drugs into the country.” Trump’s trade threats might also throw a wrench into recent U.S. efforts to establish a better working relationship with Sheinbaum’s administration than it had with her predecessor.
Some politicians in Trump’s own party have expressed optimism about building stronger security ties with Mexico under Sheinbaum. “The possibilities are better than the last administration, just based on our relationships with some of Sheinbaum’s top security people,” says Rep. Dan Crenshaw, (R., Texas). “She has a reputation for being a bit more pragmatic and less ideological.” Senior Mexican officials hope that Omar García Harfuch, Mexico’s recently appointed security minister, might be able to disarm the latent threat of unilateral U.S. military action. García Harfuch, who was security chief in Mexico City when Sheinbaum was mayor, has a long history of working with U.S. security agencies.
A career cop, García Harfuch slashed Mexico City’s homicides in half by emphasising investigation and intelligence collection. He now plans to use the same methods to cut violence nationwide, bolstered by many constitutional changes allowing officers to investigate crime. The modifications will allow the security ministry to collaborate with U.S. agencies and could be a game changer, said a senior Mexican official.
One former U.S. official involved in the Trump transition envisions giving Mexican authorities information on high-value criminal targets, making it implicit that a failure by Mexico would give the U.S. the green light to move unilaterally, one of many options that the U.S. can exercise before pushing the button, he said.
To avoid a U.S. military incursion, Mexico should act on its own against the cartels, said Tomas Angeles, a retired Mexican general and former deputy defence minister.
“Trump will try to deliver on his promises,” said Angeles.
Crenshaw said that the U.S. should make it clear there will be a “paradigm shift” on Mexico’s security: “Creating a sense that the game has shifted wildly against the cartels will change business models and change behaviours in the near-term.”
The Wall Street Journal
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