Recently elected Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum threatened that Mexico will retaliate against proposed tariffs targeting U.S. imports with tariffs of its own. Sheinbaum offered what was in effect a public rebuke to Donald Trump during a November 26 press conference, reading from a letter she said she planned to send to Trump. 

According to MSNBC, Sheinbaum warned that the president-elect’s proposal for 25% import tariffs on all goods entering the U.S. would result in mutually assured economic destruction for both countries. Currently, under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), there are mostly no tariffs on goods crossing the borders between America’s immediate neighbors.

The U.S. conducts more trade with Mexico than any other country, importing $475 billion in goods from Mexico in 2023, and exporting almost $323 billion. Trump’s proposed tariffs would spark a trade war that escalates “until we put our common businesses at risk,” Sheinbaum warned in Spanish, according to Reuters. 

“For example, Mexico’s main exporters to the U.S. are General Motors, Stellantis and Ford Motor Company, which came to Mexico 80 years ago. Why put a tax on them that puts them at risk? It is not acceptable, and would cause the U.S. and Mexico inflation and job losses,” Sheinbaum said.

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Sheinbaum also hit back at Trump’s claim that Mexico is exporting crime and drugs into the U.S., continuing, “Seventy percent of the illegal weapons seized from criminals in Mexico come from your country. We do not produce these weapons, nor do we consume synthetic drugs. Tragically, it is in our country that lives are lost to the violence resulting from meeting the drug demand in yours.”

Mexico, along with the U.S. and Canada, is currently bound by the USMCA made under Trump’s first administration in 2018, as a replacement for the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump described as a “nightmare.” In theory, the USMCA — which took effect in 2020 — is in place until 2026, but Trump has vowed to impose tariffs on goods arriving in the U.S. from Mexico and Canada on “Day One” of his presidency, which begins January 20, 2025. This would effectively end the agreement.