On Nov. 27, President-elect Donald Trump had his first phone call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. While the call between Trump and Sheinbaum was amicable enough—Trump claimed the discussion was “wonderful”—no one should have any illusions about just how turbulent U.S.-Mexico relations will be over the next four years. In the first few weeks of Trump’s second term, the bilateral relationship has already been characterized by harsh words and threats from the White House, exemplified most clearly by the tariffs that Trump decided to pause on Feb. 3 after the Mexican government agreed to dispatch another 10,000 Mexican troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. U.S. and Mexican officials are in the process of launching a bilateral dialogue on issues ranging from migration and trade to drug trafficking. Given their competing priorities—Mexico is more interested in containing violence inside its borders, whereas the United States is focused first and foremost on destroying the cartels—it is difficult to envision those talks going smoothly. The personalities of their respective leaders don’t help; Sheinbaum is a nationalist who does not appreciate foreign pressure, particularly if it is coming from the United States. Trump, a proud nationalist himself, has long viewed pressure tactics like tariffs and economic sanctions as critical tools to getting deals on his terms. The question isn’t whether policy spats between the two leaders will occur but rather how those spats are managed over the duration of Trump’s administration.
While much of the attention thus far has focused on migration and trade, Mexico’s increasingly powerful drug cartels have the potential to severely strain the bilateral relationship. The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation Cartels, Mexico’s largest, not only control “the vast majority” of the fentanyl entering the United States, but are deepening their involvement in the human trafficking business, worsening the illegal migration wave Trump seeks to end. “The Sinaloa and Jalisco Cartels pose the greatest criminal drug threat the United States has ever faced,” Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) head Anne Milgram testified to Congress in 2023. “These ruthless, violent, criminal organizations have associates, facilitators, and brokers in all 50 states in the United States, as well as in more than 100 countries around the world.”
U.S. military action against the cartels inside Mexico, once a taboo idea, is now becoming a mainstream policy option. Much of the chatter is born out of frustration and a belief among some U.S. policymakers that nothing else has worked to limit the flow of drugs into the United States and degrade the capacity of the cartels. Trump reportedly inquired about bombing fentanyl labs inside Mexico during his first term, an option the U.S. secretary of defense at the time, Mark Esper, was able to kill. But Trump’s penchant for the military option has not lessened with time: In July, he threatened U.S. strikes if the Mexican government was unable or unwilling to address the problem quickly, and in January, he signed an executive order that designated five Mexican cartels and organized crime groups as foreign terrorist organizations, a decision he put off during his first term due to resistance from the Mexican government.
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