In message to Trump, Mexico’s president displays old map of ‘Mexican America’
By Megan Janetsky
Mexico City: Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has responded sarcastically to US President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
Standing before a global map in her daily press briefing, Sheinbaum proposed that North America be renamed “America Mexicana” or “Mexican America” because a founding document dating from 1814 that preceded Mexico’s Constitution referred to it that way.
Claudia Sheinbaum points out the phrase “America Mexicana” on a map.Credit: X
“That sounds nice, no?” she added with a sarcastic tone. She also noted that the Gulf of Mexico had been named that way since 1607.
Canada’s finance minister, meanwhile, warned that Trump’s comments saying Canada should become the 51st state were no longer a joke and were meant to undermine America’s closest ally.
Dominic LeBlanc, the country’s point person for US-Canada relations, said Trump was smiling when he first made the comment during a dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in late November.
“The joke is over,” said LeBlanc. “It’s a way for him, I think, to sow confusion, to agitate people, to create chaos knowing this will never happen.”
Trump keeps floating the idea that Canada should join the United States as the 51st state, saying on Tuesday he would not use military force to invade the country, which is home to more than 40 million people and is a founding NATO partner.
Instead, Trump said he would rely on “economic force” as he erroneously cast the US trade deficit with Canada – a natural resource-rich nation that provides the US with commodities like oil – as a subsidy.
“It’s becoming very counterproductive,” LeBlanc said, referring to Trump’s rhetoric about Canada.
LeBlanc has been talking to incoming Trump administration officials about increasing border security to avoid a sweeping 25 per cent tariff that Trump has threatened to impose on all Canadian products.
Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller also fired back, dismissing Trump’s comments as “ridiculous”.
“There is no chance of us becoming the 51st state. I think that this is beneath a president of the United States,” Miller said. “I said a few weeks ago that this whole thing was like a South Park episode.”
Trump refused to rule out taking Greenland and the Panama Canal by military force and has said the US doesn’t need anything from Canada, including automobiles, lumber and dairy products.
“I don’t know who is misinforming him,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said, noting that 60 per cent of US energy imports “are coming from Canada”.
Ford said Canada would retaliate if Trump imposed tariffs, saying a wide range of US products shipped to Canada could be targeted, but he declined to specify which ones.
Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said she never takes Trump’s threats lightly, but added, “at the same time we can’t take the bait”.
AP
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