'Dialogue will prevail': Mexico's president on Trump's return

by Arturo ILIZALITURRI / Samir TOUNSI

Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum said Sunday she expected "good" relations marked by "dialogue" with US President-elect Donald Trump when he returns to the White House in a week.

In a speech to mark her first 100 days in office, Mexico's first female president stressed that her country, which is in Trump's sights over illegal migration and drug trafficking, was "free, independent and sovereign."

"We coordinate, we collaborate, but we never subordinate ourselves" to other powers, the 62-year-old leftist president told thousands of supporters at a rally in Mexico City.

Sheinbaum's early days in office have been dominated by a war of words with Trump.

On Sunday, however, she said she was "convinced" their relations would be "good, respectful and that dialogue will prevail."

Sheinbaum's mix of firmness and diplomacy in the face of the Republican's attacks have boosted her popularity.

An Enkoll opinion poll showed a staggering 80 percent of Mexicans approving of her performance so far, higher than her popular predecessor and mentor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Trump unleashed deep concern in both Mexico and Canada in November when he threatened to impose tariffs of 25 percent on all imports from both countries over their alleged failure to halt the flow of migrants and drugs into the United States.

Mexico's government said that some 400,000 jobs at US companies that manufacture in Mexico could be lost if Trump enacted his threat, and warned that the tariffs would also drive up US inflation.

On Sunday, Sheinbaum insisted that Mexican migrants north of the border "contribute more to the economy of the United States" than to that of Mexico, which last year received nearly $65 billion in remittances from US-based Mexicans, according to official figures.

But the former Mexico City mayor has also made overtures to Trump.

During telephone talks, she assured him of Mexico's efforts to prevent caravans of migrants from Central America reaching the United States across the Mexican border.

Mexican authorities have also carried out record seizures of fentanyl -- the powerful opioid linked to tens of thousands of overdose deaths in the United States -- since the row began.

Trump has nonetheless continued to take aim at the United States' southern neighbor, vowing to rename the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America."

Sheinbaum responded in kind this week, with a sarcastic suggestion to revive a 17th-century label for North America: "Mexican America."

© Agence France-Presse