Mexico’s Sheinbaum shows English to build relationship with Trump

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(Bloomberg) – Mexico’s leader surprised Donald Trump on the phone by speaking fluent English, a skill rarely seen in Latin American leaders.

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The move removed the barrier between the two by removing the need for a translator, helping to build rapport between the two leaders in a meeting last week, according to people familiar with the conversation, who asked not to be named in a private phone call. Trump shortly after described it as a “good conversation” in a post on Truth Social.

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That marked a contrast to their first phone call in early November, when President Claudia Sheinbaum called to congratulate Trump on his election — all in Spanish and through an interpreter, the people said.

Sheinbaum, who took office on October 1, stands out among his contemporaries in Latin America’s major economies — including Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro and Argentina’s Trump favorite Javier Milei — for his fluency in English. It’s a language skill he honed while living in Berkeley, California while completing his doctorate in energy engineering.

Sheinbaum rarely demonstrates her English in public, indicating that its use is strategic. Days after his election in June, amid market disputes over the power his party had amassed in Congress, he posted a video call in English with the head of the International Monetary Fund.

While common language helps, Sheinbaum still has a lot of work to do to defeat the president-elect, who has criticized Mexico for saying the government must do more to curb illegal immigration and fentanyl trafficking.

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The latest conversation with Trump led officials to believe the tone of cooperation between the two has improved — for now — after he threatened a 25% tariff earlier in the week, the people said. It also represented a contrast with his predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, who speaks one language and rarely travels outside Mexico, and Enrique Pena Nieto, who canceled a planned meeting with Trump after a phone dispute in 2018.

Also helping the negotiations was Sheinbaum’s insistence that Mexico keep migrant caravans from reaching the northern border, the people said.

Sheinbaum is taking various steps to maintain relations with the US, a buyer of 75% of Mexican products. Since the talks, Mexico has raided a shopping mall in Mexico City full of suspected illegal Chinese goods and announced its largest seizure of fentanyl pills in the violence-ridden state of Sinaloa. It also released a report outlining how the proposed tariffs could cost the US up to 400,000 jobs.

Trade Talks Preparation

In addition, Mexico is reopening its trade office in Washington where AMLO closed during the government spending cuts, and taking other steps to prepare for the difficult negotiations expected with the Trump administration regarding the US-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, according to the people. familiar with the programs.

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Sheinbaum’s administration hired Ernesto Acevedo, a former deputy economy minister and until recently Mexico’s representative to the World Bank, to run the office, said the people, who asked not to be named ahead of the public announcement.

The press office of Mexico’s economy ministry declined to comment. Sheinbaum’s press office and Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move will restore the office that was closed by AMLO after he took over in 2018. Before that, it was an important base for the Mexican government in the US capital, giving Mexico City business professionals representing their interests a base just a few blocks away. away from the White House. Former heads included Ildefonso Guajardo, who later became the country’s economy minister and USMCA’s chief negotiator, and Kenneth Smith Ramos, chief technical negotiator for the deal.

Despite Trump’s recent threat of tariffs, Mexico is preparing for a review and renegotiation of the USMCA, which is scheduled for mid-2026 at the latest. Mexico’s economic ministry is also starting to hire more negotiators who worked at the USMCA and left under AMLO, the ministry confirmed following a query from Bloomberg News.

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Luis Rosendo Gutierrez, Mexico’s vice minister of economy for international trade, said at a business event in Washington on Thursday that the country is looking to cooperate, rather than compete, with the US and Canada as an economic entity. The goal is to better deal with Asia, he added at the event.

The official held 33 meetings during four days, with representatives of various countries such as Stellantis and General Motors, American lawmakers and trade associations, according to the statement.

As part of the visit, Gutierrez met with officials from the Ministry of Finance and the Canadian government to gain an understanding of how Mexico can better use the process of evaluating foreign investment in strategic industries, such as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which is evaluating the possibility. national security risks.

Such a mechanism could be created by law and would not require approval by Congress, as the former would be a faster route to implementation, Gutierrez told Bloomberg News on the sidelines of the event.

“We would like to have the same structure in all our regions,” he said.

—With assistance from Maya Averbuch, Alex Vasquez, Josh Wingrove and Jose Orozco.

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