From Bloomberg, November 17:
- Mexico is already talking about need to reduce Chinese imports
- It’s first time a Mexican president attends G-20 since 2018
Weeks after the start of her government, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is giving signs that she’ll come down on the side of the US over China, if she’s forced to choose.
Whether that’s enough to prevent Donald Trump from sweeping her up in the punitive tariffs he’s threatened in his second term is another matter.
As Sheinbaum attends the Group of 20 summit in Brazil, her fellow leaders will be keen to sound out the new president on her role on the front line of what risks becoming a global trade war.
After all, she’s the first Mexican leader to show up at a G-20 since 2018 — when Trump was last in power — after her famously travel-averse predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Orbador habitually sent his foreign minister in his place.
Her schedule in Brazil suggests two things: she doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of Trump and is avoiding openly taking sides. There are one-on-ones with eight leaders, but neither Joe Biden nor Xi Jinping are among them, though Mexico’s foreign minister said China had asked for a meeting.
Sheinbaum is walking a fine line as she shows a willingness to cooperate with the US on topics like curbing migration and cooling relations with China, without coming across as a pushover. The reality, though, is that Washington is Mexico’s No. 1 trade partner and Beijing comes a long way behind.
It’s a contrast to the G-20 host, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who’s yet to place a call to Trump and is opening the door to a rush of Chinese investment in Brazil. Brazil’s trade with China is already more than double the volume of that with the US....
....MUCH MORE
Last week Tim Knight at Slope of Hope highlighted the iShares MSCI Mexico ETF:
Mexico’s Imminent Collapse
Just how friendly do you think the new administration is going to be to our neighbor to the south, what with their cartels and illegals and whatnot? Yep.
Slope blog home
