First face-to-face between the leaders of US and Mexico will have to wait

MEXICO CITY (AP) – For Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, the bilateral meetings scheduled on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in Canada Tuesday were even more important than the summit itself and her first face-to-face dialogue with U.S. President Donald Trump was to headline her trip.

But Trump’s decision to return to Washington early left a gaping hole in Mexico’s schedule and delayed a much anticipated encounter. Sheinbaum had been expected to continue making the case for Mexican strides in security and immigration, while negotiating to lift steel and aluminum tariffs and lobbying to kill a proposed tax on money Mexicans in the U.S. send home.

Sheinbaum said on X Tuesday that she had spoken with Trump by phone who explained that he had to return to Washington to stay on top of the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict. “We agreed to work together to soon reach an agreement on various issues that concern us today,” she wrote.

Sheinbaum was not the only world leader stood up by Trump, but she has developed one of the more intriguing relationships with the unpredictable U.S. president.

Sheinbaum’s success at managing the bilateral relationship has been such that some began to wonder aloud if she was a Trump whisperer. Most significantly, she has avoided two tariff threats that could have been devastating to Mexico’s economy.

She has done it by affording Trump the respect any U.S. president would expect from their neighbor, deploying occasional humor and pushing back – respectfully – when necessary.

Jorge Alberto Schiavon Uriegas, a professor in the International Studies department at Mexico’s Iberoamerican University, said the first Trump meeting was setting up well for Sheinbaum because it was on neutral territory and it was closed door, unlike some recent Oval Office meetings that have gone poorly for leaders of Ukraine and South Africa.

“It would allow them to advance privately the bilateral agenda or better said, (advance) diplomatically without lights, the main issues of the bilateral agenda,” Schiavon Uriegas said.

The agenda remains largely unchanged, but with a rearrangement of priorities for both countries.

The decline in cross-border migration has removed the issue from the top agenda for the first time in years.

On security, Sheinbaum has blunted some of the Trump administration’s tough talk on fentanyl and organized crime by more actively pursuing drug cartels.

In February, Mexico sent more than two dozen drug cartel figures to the U.S., including Rafael Caro Quintero, long sought in the 1985 killing of a DEA agent. That show of goodwill, and a much more visible effort against fentanyl production, has garnered a positive response from the Trump administration.

“I think there is going to be greater (security) cooperation now…greater than ever,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau told reporters Monday, after returning from a visit with Sheinbaum.

The threat to remittance income, whether through a proposed tax or increased deportations, is real for Mexico. Nearly $65 billion was sent home to Mexico last year, so it was news earlier this month when Mexico reported that remittances were down 12% in April compared with the same month last year, the largest drop in more than a decade. Sheinbaum suggested it could be related to Trump administration immigration policies.

Sheinbaum’s attendance alone signals an important prioritization of foreign policy for Mexico after six years in which her predecessor, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, repeatedly skipped multilateral gatherings like the G7.

“It allows Mexico to reposition itself in the most important spaces of dialogue and coordination at a global level,” Schiavon Uriegas said.

Michael Shifter, adjunct professor of Latin American Politics at Georgetown University, said that while the canceled Trump meeting was a loss, Sheinbaum’s other bilateral meetings with leaders from India, Germany and Canada should not be discounted.

“Mexico is in a moment of looking for and diversifying allies,” Shifter said.

Still, an in-person Trump meeting – whenever it happens – will be key for Sheinbaum. While her top Cabinet secretaries have made numerous trips to Washington to discuss security and trade with their U.S. counterparts, Trump is the one who counts.

“At the end of the day, there’s only one person who makes decisions here,” Shifter said. “You can’t be sure and trust in anything until President Trump decides.”