“This Sunday, March 9th, at 12 noon, I am calling for us to meet together at the Zócalo in Mexico City. It is the best place to be able to make decisions together and inform you of the actions we have decided to take,” said the dignitary in a video uploaded to X. She also assured that Mexico will always seek dialogue, but warned that the Mexican people are firm, proud and Mexico is a free, independent and sovereign nation.
The President recalled that the United States government unilaterally put into effect on Tuesday the 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico. “This measure will obviously affect the companies that are in our country, it will affect the people of Mexico, but it will also greatly affect the people of the United States, increasing the prices of many of the products that are manufactured in Mexico,” she said.
The president referred to the conversations held with, and high-level meetings between authorities from both countries since she and US president Donald Trump agreed on February 3th to pause the application of the taxes for a month. She placed special emphasis on the recent meeting in Washington between members of the Mexican security cabinet and their American counterparts, in which a series of agreements had been reached. “That is why we do not understand and furthermore we do not believe that these tariffs are necessary,” she said.
During her usual meeting with journalists on Tuesday morning, Sheinbaum announced that Mexico will respond with tariff and non-tariff measures to the imposition of tariffs by the United States.
The justification given by Washington for applying the taxes is that Mexico is supposedly not doing enough in areas such as the fight against drug trafficking, however, the results obtained by Mexico in that area during the Sheinbaum administration are eloquent.
In the case of fentanyl trafficking, the figures from the US Customs and Border Protection Office show that seizures of the substance from Mexico were reduced by 50 percent from October 2024 to last January. In addition, during the five months of the current government, Mexico seized 6,998 firearms (75 percent of which come from the United States), and 121.4 tons of drugs, including 1,260 kilograms and 1,332,126 fentanyl pills.
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