Hours after US President Donald Trump announced broad tariffs on major US trading partners Canada, Mexico and China while citing a “major threat” from illegal immigration and drugs, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo rejected the “White House’s slander” against her government.”
Blasting the US suggestion of criminal alliances in her government, Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo ordered retaliatory tariffs on US. Follow Trump tariff news live updates
“If such an alliance exists anywhere, it is in the United States armories that sell high-powered weapons to these criminal groups,” Mexico President Sheinbaum said, adding that it has been “demonstrated by the US Department of Justice itself in January of this year.”
“We categorically reject the White House’s slander against the Mexican government of having alliances with criminal organizations, as well as any intention of intervention in our territory,” Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo said in a post on X, responding to Donald Trump administration’s tariff move.
Mexico president slams US over fentanyl
The Mexican president slammed the US government over the consumption of fentanyl, a highly potent synthetic opioid drug, saying that in four months, her government has seized more than 40 tons of drugs, including 20 million doses of fentanyl. It has also arrested more than ten thousand people linked to these groups, she said.
“If the United States government and its agencies wanted to address the serious consumption of fentanyl in their country, they could, for example, combat the sale of narcotics on the streets of their main cities, which they do not do, and the money laundering generated by this illegal activity that has done so much harm to their population,” Sheinbaum added.
US could also start a massive campaign to prevent the consumption of these drugs and take care of their young people, as we have done in Mexico, Sheinbaum said, adding that drug consumption and distribution is in the US and is a public health problem that “they have not addressed”.
“In addition, the synthetic opioid epidemic in the United States has its origin in the indiscriminate prescription of drugs of this type, authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as demonstrated by the lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company,” she added.
‘Mexico does not want confrontation’
Mexico does not want confrontation, the president said, batting starting from “collaboration between neighboring countries”.
“Mexico not only does not want fentanyl to reach the United States, but anywhere. Therefore, if the United States wants to combat criminal groups that traffic drugs and generate violence, we must work together in an integrated manner, but always under the principles of shared responsibility, mutual trust, collaboration and, above all, respect for sovereignty, which is not negotiable.”
Coordination, yes; subordination, no, Sheinbaum wrote on X.
Sheinbaum proposed to US President Donald Trump to establish a working group which would include their “best public health and security teams”.
“Problems are not resolved by imposing tariffs, but by talking and dialoguing, as we did in recent weeks with your State Department to address the phenomenon of migration; in our case, with respect for human rights,” Sheinbaum said.
“The graph that President Trump has been posting on social media about the decline in migration was created by my team, which has been in constant communication with his. I instruct the Secretary of Economy to implement Plan B that we have been working on, which includes tariff and non-tariff measures in defense of Mexico’s interests,” she said.
Nothing by force; everything by reason and right, she concluded.