Will keeping a ‘cool head’ allow Mexico to avoid the worst of the tariffs?

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum addresses supporters at a rally in Mexico City on Sunday, March 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Once again, she’s adopted a wait-and-see strategy. When U.S. President Donald Trump announced steep tariffs on all cars shipped to the United States this week – a significant escalation in a global trade war – his Mexican counterpart Claudia Sheinbaum chose pragmatism and patience.

Playing the long game is the same strategy President Sheinbaum has used since the beginning of the new American administration, one that has so far saved Mexico from steep tariffs.

In 2024, Mexico exported to the United States automobiles and auto parts worth US$182.3 billion, according to the from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Given those figures, the new auto tariffs announced could pose catastrophic consequences for the Mexican economy – but Sheinbaum chose to keep a cool head.

“We’ll have to wait and see what President Trump says, and from there, we’ll have to decide, one way or another, what decisions we’d make. We’ve been through this three times; this would be the third,” Sheinbaum calmly said Wednesday during her daily morning media briefing.

The ‘cool head’ approach

The day after Trump’s inauguration, Sheinbaum said it was “important to keep a cool head” when she was asked to react to the American president’s first executive orders. Those orders included renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and declaring multiple Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations – an act that could pave the way to using American military force on Mexican soil.

Sheinbaum used the same strategy when Trump was about to announce tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the U.S., impacting her country, among others. Speaking to reporters at her daily morning briefing, she repeated what had already become her mantra for the Trump administration: “As I said before, [we have to keep a] cool head on this,” she said.

Unlike top Canadian officials, Sheinbaum has so far avoided getting into a war of words with her American counterpart. Sheinbaum – a 62-year-old climate scientist and former Mexico City mayor who became the first female president of Mexico in October – has remained pragmatic and calm – at least publicly – to Trump’s goading. For Oscar Ocampo, an analyst at the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness in Mexico City, this is a winning strategy.

“This is something we must recognize about President Claudia Sheinbaum and her negotiating team. What they have achieved is important. Mexico did well not to show its cards prematurely,” Ocampo told CNN. “Canada announced retaliation from the outset; Mexico didn’t, and it was the right thing to do to allow room for negotiation before imposing any measures,” Ocampo told CNN.

Adriana García, a financial analysis coordinator at “Mexico, ¿How Are We Doing So Far?,” a Mexico City think-tank that analyzes the Mexican economy, told CNN that she agrees. Unlike Canada, García said, Mexico has managed to maintain dialogue with top US officials and avoid any highly-mediatized clashes.

Regarding the latest threat of 25 percent tariffs to automobiles and auto parts, Sheinbaum has said she will offer a “comprehensive response” on April 3, but signaled that her government is working behind the scenes to remove or reduce fees on certain Mexican-assembled autos and parts.

Her team is also putting in the miles. Mexican Economy Secretary Marcelo Ebrard traveled to Washington once again this week to meet with top US officials regarding the tariffs. By his own count, Ebrard has met with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick six times.

“We made progress toward the goal of not charging manufacturers multiple tariffs — a piston crosses the border seven times when assembled — that was already agreed upon by both governments,” Ebrard said during a press briefing earlier this week.

Praise for Sheinbaum’s deft management of a tense situation goes beyond her own country; even Trump has recognized her negotiating chops, telling her “You’re tough,” in a phone call last month, according to a recent New York Times report. This is quite a departure for a leader who constantly rails against other heads of states and political enemies.

Publicly, Trump has also been complimentary. “Our relationship has been a very good one, and we are working hard, together, on the Border, both in terms of stopping Illegal Aliens from entering the United States and, likewise, stopping Fentanyl,” Trump wrote earlier this month on Truth Social. “Thank you to President Sheinbaum for your hard work and cooperation!”

It remains to be seen whether Sheinbaum’s strategy will ultimately succeed, but her presidency and the country depend on it.

 As former Mexican Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo told CNN, who was involved in US-Mexico-Canada trade negotiations during the first Trump administration, broad new tariffs “would be a fundamental blow to the Mexican manufacturing sector that would cause us greater difficulties than we already have – with an economy with zero growth and the possibility of entering a recession.”

Analysis by Rafael Romo, CNN. CNN’s Gabriela Frías and Karen Esquivel in Mexico City contributed to this report

U.S. President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs on trading partners are set to take effect on April 2, a day he has proclaimed as “Liberation Day” for American trade. CTV News will have extensive coverage across all platforms:

• CTVNews.ca will have in-depth coverage, real-time updates, and expert analysis on what the tariffs will mean for Canadians.
• CP24.com will report on any developments out of Queen’s Park and what the tariffs mean for the people of the GTHA.
• BNNBloomberg.ca will explain what this means for the business community, investors, and the market.