Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum asked on Monday to leave the “dialogue” through the media with the president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, who over the weekend suggested that his country annex Mexico, to which she accused of receiving American “subsidies”.

“I think we’re going to leave this dialogue through the media for a while. Obviously, Mexico is a free, sovereign, independent country, because we all know that and so we always have to defend it,” the president said during her morning press conference.

With this “dialogue” with Trump, Sheinbaum referred to the series of statements that the next US president has made in recent days regarding Mexico, the last ones during an interview published on Sunday by the NBC network where he assured that his country subsidizes Mexicans and Canada, and suggested annexing them as state 51 and 52.

Border trade policy

Trump said that the United States is subsidizing Mexico and Canada with the current trade policy, and assured that the increase in tariffs “appropriately” will improve the economy, but he cannot guarantee that it will not have an impact on American families.

“We are subsidizing Mexico and Canada and many other countries around the world. All I want is to have a level and fair ground, quickly,” he said in the interview, the first with a television since the November 5 elections, in which he imposed on the Democrat and Vice President Kamala Harris.

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In this regard, Sheinbaum said that the subsidy refers to the increase in exports made from Mexico to the United States and that are now more than imports.

“But yesterday I raised, at the event we had in Nuevo Laredo, that the only way to compete with other regions is to maintain and strengthen the trade treaty,” he emphasized.

He also said that both countries should not be seen as competition but as “complement”.

“President Trump was the one who signed the T-MEC and the United States has had a lot of benefits from the treaty, so I’m going to talk, there will be time to be able to talk about these benefits. So, I’ll leave it there,” he concluded.

Budget for mass deportations

Sheinbaum also assured that “not much more budget is required” to face the mass deportations and other restrictive immigration policies that Trump promises and that he plans to bring his migration plan into dialogue.

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The Mexican ruler argued that the National Institute of Migration (INM) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) have enough resources to deal with deportations and the migratory flow when Trump takes office on January 20.

“Not much more budget is required, we are working on strengthening the Institute, it is not so much the budget as some internal reorganization, because the Institute fulfills several functions and everything is concentrated in the same place since the Institute was formed, so we are working on it,” he said.

The country is concerned about Trump’s promises of mass deportations from the United States, where Mexicans are about half of the 11 million undocumented people and their remittances represent almost 4% of Mexico’s gross domestic product (GDP), which this year would receive an estimated record of 65 billion dollars.

Concern about Trump’s immigration plan continues

The president will head the National Security Council this Tuesday in the port of Acapulco with all the governors of the country, with whom she hopes to put together an immigration plan in the face of mass deportations and other Trump policies.

Although the daily detention of migrants on the border of the United States with Mexico has fallen by 75% since December 2023, according to the Mexican Government, irregular migration through Mexico rose by 193% year-on-year in the first half of the year to exceed 712,000 people, according to the Migration Policy Unit.

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In addition, Sheinbaum valued the appointment of Christopher Landau, former ambassador to Mexico (2019-2021), as “number two” of the US State Department, as announced on Sunday by President-elect Trump.

“Yesterday the (former) ambassador Landau, who knows Mexico very well, was appointed by President Trump as, let’s say, the simile would be undersecretary of the State Department, which is good,” the president said during her morning press conference.

The Mexican ruler acknowledged that Landau as ambassador to Mexico during Trump’s first presidency did “a good job,” and assured that she “knows the country very well,” which could be positive on issues such as migration.