The morning after former U.S. President Donald Trump won last week’s presidential election, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sought to reassure her compatriots. “There’s no reason for concern,” she told the Mexican people. “We are a free country, independent and sovereign, and we will have a good relationship with the United States, I am convinced.”
The need for reassurance was obvious. When Trump begins his second term in January, Mexico will stand squarely in the crosshairs of his agenda. The United States’ neighbor to the south is bracing for Trump to enact some of the proposals that drove his most recent presidential campaign.
The challenge for Sheinbaum, who has held office for little more than a month, is monumental. But it is nowhere near a lost cause.