Dr Sheinbaum, or: how she learned to stop worrying & love the trade agreement

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum pointing to an image of her younger self protesting former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari at Livermore, CA. Image credit: ZUMA Press / Alamy.

by David Agren.

It was a routine question at the president’s April 2 press conference: Had she spoken with the new Canadian Prime Minister? 

President Claudia Sheinbaum said she had spoken with Prime Minister Mark Carney, offering the standard boilerplate response: “We agree that it is very important to continue communicating with the United States due to the importance of the integration of our three economies and to continue strengthening the trade agreement.”

She then detoured into a relitigation of her past opposition to the original North American Free Trade Agreement – responding to unnamed members of the so-called “commentoracia” (chattering classes), who apparently had pointed to her posture evolving from protesting as a student against NAFTA to defending continental integration as president. 

The evidence was a photo from a protest during her days as a student at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California in the early 1990s. Sheinbaum showed the black-and-white photo from the Stanford Daily, showing her waving a sign reading, “Fair trade and democracy now!!” (with two exclamation points) at a protest of Mexican students against a visit to Stanford by then-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

Sheinbaum said she would not call Salinas “president” because “he arrived by fraud,” referring to the 1988 election in which a mysterious computer crash in the interior ministry wiped out results favouring leftist candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. 

But she insisted: “It’s not that we were against the agreement. But we’ve always said: “A fair treaty and democracy now.”

She continued, “We have democracy now and there’s a better treaty, which was negotiated at the time … first by [then-president Enrique] Peña Nieto and then by [president Andrés Manuel] López Obrador.”

The statements show the president’s evolving views on continental free trade as she moved from her origins in leftist student politics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) to the Mexican presidency. 

They also illustrate the political consensus coalescing around open markets over the past four decades as Mexico shifted from a closed economy to economic integration with the United States and Canada, along with free trade agreements with more than 40 countries. 

Sheinbaum, like AMLO, still talks of the so-called “neoliberal period.” But she has emerged as a steadfast defender of continental free trade at a time when US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” have upended the world economic order

She also champions the idea of a North American block to confront China and has championed the concept of nearshoring, in which companies de-risk by moving manufacturing and supply chains from China to North America.

“This commercial agreement is the only way to successfully confront China,” she said in December.

Her comments contrast sharply with other North American leaders.

Trump, of course, ripped up the original NAFTA and pushed the new USMCA. He later imposed 25% duties on Canada and Mexico unless the countries stamp out fentanyl and stop migrants. He later exempted products not covered by the USMCA – approximately 50% of exports in Mexico and 38% in Canada. 

His Democratic opponent in the 2024 election, Kamala Harris, reminded voters during the campaign that she was one of 10 senators to vote against the USMCA.

Canadians have never wavered on free trade with the United States, though Carney struck a pessimistic tone on commercial relations with the US and applied retaliatory tariffs on autos. And Ontario Premier Doug Ford once again proposed kicking Mexico to the kerb.

Sheinbaum, meanwhile, celebrated being spared the worst of Trump’s tariffs. “I think that with the dialogue we’ve established with the United States, we’re in conditions to be able to have an improved agreement,” she said Wednesday, alluding to the USMCA review in 2026.

AMLO arrived in office in 2018 amid questions over the continental free trade agreement. He had expressed some doubt during the campaign, saying at his campaign kickoff in Ciudad Juárez:

“If it were certain that [NAFTA] only benefited Mexico, our economy wouldn’t stay stuck and there wouldn’t be immigration,” he said in a stump speech. But he ultimately agreed to the USMCA and wanted Canada to be part of it.

NAFTA was oversold with promises of vaulting Mexico into “First World” status. It was also blamed for throwing campesinos off their land and spurring migration to the United States. Wages remained low and economic growth was underwhelming.

But Mexicans came to appreciate the deal, which Americanized Mexico in many ways – introducing US products, which were previously sold as contraband (called “fayuca”) in itinerant markets, promoting US cultural tastes, and expanding the manufacturing for export economy.

Some states such those across the Bajío boomed with GDP growth resembling Asian nations – making it hard to undo any free trade deal without sending parts of the country into crisis.

Few in the political class cared to protest the agreement - even AMLO, whose Morena party has won big in border states like Tamaulipas, Sonora and Baja California - which has become part of the fabric of Mexico

“The free trade agreement has taken on a life of its own in the country. People can no longer imagine Mexico not having any agreement,” said Ilán Semo, history professor at the Iberoamerican University. “Everyone says it can't be lost. The treaty has become a symbol of certainty.” 

Mexico sends 83% of its exports to the US. That alone makes abandoning continental free trade unthinkable. It explains Sheinbaum’s motives for agreeing with Trump’s demands on security and migration enforcement. 

It also explains why she fights so doggedly for the country’s ultimate neoliberal accomplishment – and why so many Mexicans, including those from a left-wing movement previously opposed to the original free trade agreement, back her.