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Mexico Managed to Stave Off Trump’s Tariffs. Now What?

Published

1 year ago

February 4, 2025

Mexico Managed to Stave Off Trump’s Tariffs. Now What?

Follow live updates on President Trump’s tariffs and the global fallout.

To broad relief across her country, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico announced on Monday that she had forestalled a plan by the Trump administration to impose 25 percent tariffs on Mexican goods. Initially set to go into effect at the stroke of midnight, the tariffs have been delayed by a month, she said.

“We have this month to work, to convince each other that this is the best way forward,” Ms. Sheinbaum said at her regular morning news conference after speaking to President Trump. Suggesting that she might be able hold off the penalties altogether, she said she had told her American counterpart: “We are going to deliver results. Good results for your people, good results for the Mexican people.”

The announcement was seen as a victory for the Mexican government in dealing with Mr. Trump, who has set a new tone of aggression in the first weeks of his presidency. He has demanded that even some of the United States’ closest allies acquiesce to his demands or face consequences in the form of tariffs or perhaps even military force.

The deal, however, will force Mexico into a critical 30-day test during which it must not only continue its recent progress but also make still more headway on two of the country’s most enduring challenges: drug trafficking and migration.

Under the terms of the agreement, Mexico will post an additional 10,000 Mexican National Guardsmen on the border. In return, Ms. Sheinbaum said, the U.S. government will work to stop the flow of arms into Mexico.

In his own statement, Mr. Trump made no mention of a promise to help curb firearms trafficking, but he celebrated the deployment of Mexican troops.

While Mexico has spent the past year stepping up its immigration enforcement, which has already contributed to a drastic reduction in U.S. border crossings, the issue of drug trafficking is much more complicated. It will require Mexico to have “a very clear, very well-defined plan,” said Ildefonso Guajardo, a former economy minister who negotiated with the first Trump administration.

Mr. Trump and Thomas Homan, the administration’s border czar, have repeatedly laid blame for the fentanyl overdose crisis in the United States on Mexican cartels as well as on migrants they say move the drug across the border. Mr. Homan falsely told Fox News that Mexican cartels had “killed a quarter of a million Americans with fentanyl.”

Since 2019, Mexico has displaced China as the biggest supplier of fentanyl to the United States. Besides being extraordinarily potent, the drug is very easy to make — and even easier to smuggle across the border, hidden under clothes or in glove compartments. According to U.S. prosecutors, the Sinaloa Cartel spends only $800 on chemicals to produce a kilo that can net a profit of up to $640,000 in the United States.

Mexico has been the source of almost all of the fentanyl seized by U.S. law enforcement in recent years, and the amount crossing the border has increased tenfold in the past five years. But federal data shows it is brought in not by migrants but by American citizens recruited by cartel organizations. More than 80 percent of the people who have been sentenced for fentanyl trafficking at the southern border are U.S. citizens.

“All that makes it incredibly harder to go after and control the market,” said Jaime López-Aranda, a security analyst based in Mexico City.

Ms. Sheinbaum’s administration has already stepped up efforts to combat fentanyl since she took office in October, including the largest seizure of the drug — about 20 million doses — ever recorded in Mexico. Security forces regularly report advances on arrests and dismantled drug-production labs.

But experts question how much of a dent these efforts truly represent. “Mexico can keep carrying out symbolic actions like it has been doing lately,” Mr. López-Aranda said, “but there is little more it can do.”

Waging a full war on the cartels would likely backfire and set off more waves of violence across Mexico, analysts say. The country has experienced those consequences before.

Upon taking office in 2006, President Felipe Calderón declared a war on criminal groups. The idea was to eradicate them and loosen their grip on the country. But targeting cartel leaders and engaging in direct confrontations only led to these groups splintering into more violent, brutal cells, leading to one of Mexico’s bloodiest periods.

“What is even going to happen after we destroy all the labs?” said Mr. Guajardo. “These guys are just going to focus more on extortion, theft and killings. Mexico will be left to deal with the problem alone.”

Under the agreement announced on Monday, Mexico will also bolster security forces at the border. Unlike the United States, Mexico does not have a specific security force dedicated to patrolling the border, instead relying on a combination of the military and National Guard.

Experts questioned how effective a deployment of 10,000 additional troops would be at delivering Mexico’s promised results when it came to fentanyl.

“Ten thousand members perhaps sounds like a lot, but it’s all in the details,” said Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, a drug policy researcher at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at U.C. San Diego. “If you’re only going to have them at the border, that doesn’t address the entire fentanyl production chain.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, noted that this is the third time in six years that Mexico has committed to sending a large deployment of National Guard to the U.S. border.

While Mexico’s forces will “try to achieve results at all costs,” a more effective strategy would be to have officials from both countries share more intelligence and information to stop the flow of drugs, said Jonathan Maza, a Mexican-based security analyst.

The lack of cooperation was something that American officials complained about during the administration of Ms. Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Given the importance to Mexico of avoiding tariffs, Mr. Maza said the National Guard may achieve results in the short and medium term. But, he warned, criminal groups are likely to adapt.

On curbing migration and illegal crossings at the border, Mexico may have a more straightforward path to success, having adopted several effective measures in the last year.

National Guard troops are deployed to immigration checkpoints from north to south, and migration officials have also instituted a policy of “decompression” in which migrants are bused from concentrated areas in the north farther south to keep pressure off the border. The Mexican authorities have used busing on occasion for years, but its expansion in 2024 highlighted the country’s toughening policies on migration.

Breaking up migrant caravans headed for the United States is another step Mexican officials have taken in recent years. When several emerged in the weeks leading up to Mr. Trump taking office, they were all disbanded.

Mexico’s tougher stance, paired with President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s executive order last summer to essentially prevent undocumented migrants from receiving asylum at the border, contributed to a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration at the border in 2024. In December, U.S. Border Patrol officials recorded only 47,326 illegal crossings — a sharp drop from the record 249,740 documented a year earlier.

The Mexican authorities have also introduced bureaucratic hurdles for migrants and asylum seekers.

“Mexico’s strategy has exhausted and worn down migrants,” said Mauro Pérez Bravo, the former head of the National Migration Institute’s citizen council, which evaluates the country’s migration policies. “What it did was to emotionally and physically drain people to keep them from getting to the United States.”

In exchange for deploying troops to the border and stemming the flow of fentanyl and migrants into the United States, Ms. Sheinbaum said she secured Mr. Trump’s agreement to do more to prevent American-manufactured firearms from entering Mexico.

“These high-powered weapons that arrive illegally arm the criminal groups and give them firepower,” she said.

This is not the first time that Mexico has made that argument.

In 2021, the country sued several gun makers and one distributor, blaming them for the devastating, decades-long bloodshed from which Mexico has struggled to recover. The U.S. Supreme Court will decide this year whether Mexico may sue gun manufacturers in the United States. A recent analysis showed that nearly 9,000 gun dealers operate across cities in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

But in his own remarks, Mr. Trump did not make any mention of Ms. Sheinbaum’s request. It is unclear how his administration could actually fulfill such a commitment and what, if anything, Mexico would do should it fail to do so.

James Wagner, Paulina Villegas and Simon Romero contributed reporting.

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World

Trump says he is directing federal agencies to cease use of Anthropic technology

Published

3 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

Trump says he is directing federal agencies to cease use of Anthropic technology

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said he was directing every federal agency to immediately cease all use of Anthropic’s technology, adding there would be a six-month phase out for agencies such as the Defense Department who use the company’s products.

World

UN Human Rights Council chief cuts off speaker criticizing US-sanctioned official

Published

4 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

UN Human Rights Council chief cuts off speaker criticizing US-sanctioned official

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) abruptly cut off a video statement after the speaker began criticizing several United Nations officials, including one who has been sanctioned by the Trump administration. The video message was being played during a U.N. session in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday morning.

Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the and president of Human Rights, called out several U.N. officials in her message, including U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk and special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who is the subject of U.S. sanctions.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions against Albanese July 9, 2025, saying that she “has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism and open contempt for the United States, Israel and the West.”

“That bias has been apparent across the span of her career, including recommending that the ICC, without a legitimate basis, issue arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant,” Rubio added.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Francesca Albanese (Getty Images)

“I was the only American U.N.-accredited NGO with a speaking slot, and I wasn’t allowed even to conclude my 90 seconds of allotted time. Free speech is non-existent at the U.N. so-called ‘Human Rights Council,’” Bayefsky told Fox News Digital.

Bayefsky noted the irony of the council cutting off her video in a proceeding that was said to be an “interactive dialogue,” an event during which experts are allowed to speak to the council about human rights issues.

“I was cut off after naming Francesca Albanese, Navi Pillay and Chris Sidoti for covering up Palestinian use of rape as a weapon of war and trafficking in blatant antisemitism. I named the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, who is facing disturbing sexual assault allegations but still unaccountable almost two years later. Those are the people and the facts that the United Nations wants to protect and hide,” Bayefsky told Fox News Digital.

“It is an outrage that I am silenced and singled out for criticism on the basis of naming names.”

Bayefsky’s statement was cut off as she accused Albanese and Navi Pillay, the former chair of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory; and Chris Sidoti, a commissioner of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. She also slammed Khan, who has faced rape allegations. Khan has denied the sexual misconduct allegations against him.

Had her video message been played in full, Bayefsky would have gone on to criticize Türk’s recent report for not demanding accountability for the “Palestinian policy to pay to kill Jews, including Hamas terror boss Yahya Sinwar who got half a million dollars in blood money.”

When the video was cut short, Human Rights Council President Ambassador Sidharto Reza Suryodipuro characterized Bayefsky’s remarks as “derogatory, insulting and inflammatory” and said that they were “not acceptable.”

“The language used by the speaker cannot be allowed as it has exceeded the limits of tolerance and respect within the framework of the council which we all in this room hold to,” Suryodipuro said.

The Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Feb. 26, 2025. (Denis Balibouse/Reuters)

MELANIA TRUMP TO TAKE THE GAVEL AT UN SECURITY COUNCIL IN HISTORIC FIRST

In response to Fox News Digital’s request for comment, Human Rights Council Media Officer Pascal Sim said the council has had long-established rules on what it considers to be acceptable language.

“Rulings regarding the form and language of interventions in the Human Rights Council are established practices that have been in place throughout the existence of the council and used by all council presidents when it comes to ensuring respect, tolerance and dignity inherent to the discussion of human rights issues,” Sim told Fox News Digital.

When asked if the video had been reviewed ahead of time, Sim said it was assessed for length and audio quality to allow for interpretation, but that the speakers are ultimately “responsible for the content of their statement.”

“The video statement by the NGO ‘Touro Law Center, The Institute on Human Rights and The Holocaust’ was interrupted when it was deemed that the language exceeded the limits of tolerance and respect within the framework of the council and could not be tolerated,” Sim said.

“As the presiding officer explained at the time, all speakers are to remain within the appropriate framework and terminology used in the council’s work, which is well known by speakers who routinely participate in council proceedings. Following that ruling, none of the member states of the council have objected to it.”

Flag alley at the United Nations’ European headquarters during the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, Sept. 11, 2023. (Denis Balibouse/File Photo/Reuters)

UNRWA OFFICIALS LOBBY CONGRESSIONAL STAFFERS AGAINST TRUMP TERRORIST DESIGNATION THREAT

While Bayefsky’s statement was cut off, other statements accusing Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing were allowed to be played and read in full.

This is not the first time that Bayefsky was interrupted. Exactly one year ago, on Feb. 27, 2025, her video was cut off when she mentioned the fate of Ariel and Kfir Bibas. Jürg Lauber, president of the U.N. Human Rights Council at the time, stopped the video and declared that Bayefsky had used inappropriate language.

Bayefsky began the speech by saying, “The world now knows Palestinian savages murdered 9-month-old baby Kfir,” and she ws almost immediately cut off by Lauber.

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“Sorry, I have to interrupt,” Lauber abruptly said as the video of Bayefsky was paused. Lauber briefly objected to the “language” used in the video, but then allowed it to continue. After a few more seconds, the video was shut off entirely.

Lauber reiterated that “the language that’s used by the speaker cannot be tolerated,” adding that it “exceeds clearly the limits of tolerance and respect.”

Last year, when the previous incident occurred, Bayefsky said she believed the whole thing was “stage-managed,” as the council had advanced access to her video and a transcript and knew what she would say.

Rachel Wolf is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital and FOX Business.

World

Did the EU bypass Hungary’s veto on Ukraine’s €90 billion loan?

Published

5 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

Did the EU bypass Hungary’s veto on Ukraine’s €90 billion loan?

A post on X by European Parliament President Roberta Metsola has triggered a wave of misinformation linked to the EU’s €90 billion support loan to Ukraine, which is designed to help Kyiv meet its general budget and defence needs amid Russia’s ongoing invasion.

Hungary said earlier this week that it would block both the loan — agreed by EU leaders in December — and a new EU sanctions package against Moscow amid a dispute over oil supplies.

Shortly afterwards, Metsola posted on X that she had signed the Ukraine support loan on behalf of the parliament.

She said the funds would be used to maintain essential public services, support Ukraine’s defence, protect shared European security, and anchor Ukraine’s future within Europe.

The announcement triggered a wave of reactions online, with some claiming Hungary’s veto had been ignored, but this is incorrect.

Metsola did sign the loan on behalf of the European Parliament, but that’s only one step in the EU’s legislative process. Her signature does not mean the loan has been definitively implemented.

How the process works

In December, after failing to reach an agreement on using frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort, the European Council agreed in principle to provide €90 billion to help Kyiv meet its budgetary and military needs over the next two years.

On 14 January, the European Commission put forward a package of legislative proposals to ensure continued financial support for Ukraine in 2026 and 2027.

These included a proposal to establish a €90 billion Ukraine support loan, amendments to the Ukraine Facility — the EU instrument used to deliver budgetary assistance — and changes to the EU’s multiannual financial framework so the loan could be backed by any unused budgetary “headroom”.

Under EU law, these proposals must be adopted by both the European Parliament and the European Council. Because the loan requires amendments to EU budgetary rules, it ultimately needs unanimous approval from all member states.

Metsola’s signature therefore does not amount to a final decision, nor does it override Hungary’s veto.

The oil dispute behind Hungary’s opposition

Budapest says its objections are linked to a dispute over the Druzhba pipeline, a Soviet-era route that carries Russian oil via Ukraine to Hungary and Slovakia.

According to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), Hungary and Slovakia imported an estimated €137 million worth of Russian crude through the pipeline in January alone, under a temporary EU exemption.

Oil flows reportedly stopped in late January after a Russian air strike that Kyiv says damaged the pipeline’s southern branch in western Ukraine. Hungary disputes this, with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán accusing Ukraine of blocking it from being used.

Speaking in Kyiv alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the pipeline had been damaged by Russia, not Kyiv.

He added that repairs were dangerous and could not be carried out quickly without putting Ukrainian servicemen in danger.

Tensions escalated further after reports that Ukraine struck a Russian pumping station serving the pipeline. Orbán responded by ordering increased security at critical infrastructure sites, claiming Kyiv was attempting to disrupt Hungary’s energy system.