Mexico’s Sheinbaum Shows Off English to Build Rapport with Trump

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(Bloomberg) — Mexico’s leader surprised Donald Trump in a phone call by speaking fluent English, an ability he rarely encounters with Latin American leaders.

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The move removed a barrier between the pair by removing the need for an interpreter, which helped create a rapport between the two leaders in the interaction last week, according to people familiar with the conversation, who requested anonymity while discussing the private call. Trump soon after described it as a “great conversation” in a post on Truth Social.

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That marked a contrast to their first call at the beginning of November, when President Claudia Sheinbaum called to congratulate her on Trump’s election, all in Spanish and through an interpreter, the people said.

Sheinbaum, who took office on October 1, stands out among her contemporaries in Latin America’s largest economies — including Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro and Trump favorite Javier Miley in Argentina — for her fluent command of the English language. It’s a language skill she honed during her time living in Berkeley, California, while earning her doctorate in energy engineering.

Sheinbaum rarely shows her English in public, suggesting that her use is strategic. Days after her election in June, amid market concerns about the power her party had gained in Congress, she posted a video of an English-language call with the head of the International Monetary Fund.

While common language has helped, Sheinbaum still has a lot of work to do to win support from the president-elect, who has criticized Mexico with claims that the government should do more to curb illegal immigration and fentanyl trafficking.

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The recent conversation with Trump has led officials to believe that the tone of interaction between the two has improved — for now — after he threatened earlier in the week to impose a 25% tariff, the sources said. It also marks a contrast with her predecessors Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, who is monolingual and rarely travels outside of Mexico, and Enrique Peña Nieto, who canceled a planned meeting with Trump after a confrontational phone call in 2018.

Sheinbaum’s insistence that Mexico prevent migrant caravans from reaching the northern border also helped the interaction, the people said.

Sheinbaum is taking various steps to maintain the relationship with the United States, which buys 75% of Mexico’s exports. Since the conversation, Mexico has raided a Mexico City mall filled with allegedly illegal Chinese goods, and announced its largest-ever seizure of fentanyl pills in the violence-torn state of Sinaloa. It also released a report outlining how the proposed tariffs could cost the United States up to 400,000 jobs.

Preparing for trade talks

In addition, Mexico is reopening its trade office in Washington that AMLO closed amid a campaign to cut government spending, and is taking other steps to prepare for expected difficult negotiations with the Trump administration over a U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, the people said. Familiar with the plans.

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Sheinbaum’s administration is appointing Ernesto Acevedo, a former deputy economy minister and until recently Mexico’s top representative at the World Bank, to run the office, the people said, asking to remain anonymous ahead of the public announcement.

The press office of the Mexican Ministry of Economy declined to comment. Sheinbaum’s press office and the Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move will restore the office that AMLO closed after taking office in 2018. Before that, it was an important base for the Mexican government in the US capital, giving Mexico City trade experts who represent its interests a base just a few blocks away. Away from the White House. Past presidents include Ildefonso Guajardo, who later became the country’s economy minister and chief negotiator for the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and Kenneth Smith Ramos, the deal’s chief technical negotiator.

Beyond Trump’s recent tariff threat, Mexico is preparing for a review and possible renegotiation of the USMCA, scheduled for mid-2026 at the latest. Mexico’s Economy Ministry has also begun reassigning some career negotiators who worked on the USMCA and left under AMLO’s leadership, the ministry confirmed after a question from Bloomberg News.

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Luis Rosendo Gutierrez, Mexico’s deputy economy minister for international trade, said at a trade event in Washington on Thursday that the country is looking to cooperate with the United States and Canada as an economic bloc, rather than compete with them. He added during the event that the goal is to better confront Asia.

The official held 33 meetings over four days, with representatives of multinational companies such as Stellantis and General Motors, US lawmakers, and trade associations, according to a statement.

As part of the visit, Gutierrez met with officials from the Treasury Department and the Canadian government to gain insight into how Mexico can best implement a foreign investment screening process for strategic industries, similar to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which evaluates potentials. National security risks.

Such a mechanism could be established by decree and would not necessarily require congressional approval, as the former might be a faster path to implementation, Gutierrez told Bloomberg News on the sidelines of the event.

“We would like to have the same framework for all of our regions,” he said.

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

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