Mexico threatens U.S. gunmakers with fresh legal action

Mexico's president on Friday warned U.S. gunmakers they could face fresh legal action and be deemed accomplices if Washington designates Mexican cartels as terrorist groups.

The Latin American nation, which is under mounting pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to curb illegal drug smuggling, wants its neighbor to crack down on firearms trafficking in the other direction.

"If they declare these criminal groups as terrorists, then we'll have to expand our US lawsuit," President Claudia Sheinbaum said at a daily press conference.

A new charge could include alleged complicity of gunmakers with terror groups, she said.

"The lawyers are looking at it, but they could be accomplices," Sheinbaum warned.

She said the US Justice Department itself has recognized that "74 percent of the weapons" used by criminal groups in Mexico come from north of the border.

On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the US State Department plans to classify criminal groups from Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador and Venezuela as "terrorist organizations."

They include Mexico's two main drug trafficking organizations, the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels, the report said.

Trump signed an executive order on January 20 creating a process for such a designation, saying that the cartels "constitute a national security threat beyond that posed by traditional organized crime."

- Spiraling violence -

Mexico says that between 200,000 and 750,000 weapons manufactured by U.S. gunmakers are smuggled across the border from the United States every year, many of which are found at crime scenes.

Last August, a US judge dismissed a $10 billion lawsuit brought by the Mexican government against six gun manufacturers based in the United States that sought to hold them responsible for deaths from guns trafficked into Mexico.

The suit was thrown out based on a lack of jurisdiction, though Mexico said at the time that its lawsuit against two manufacturers, Smith and Wesson and Interstate Arms, would continue.

Another suit brought in the border state of Arizona seeks sanctions against dealers that sold guns which were used in serious crimes over the border.

Mexico tightly controls firearm sales, making them practically impossible to obtain legally.

Even so, drug-related violence has seen around 480,000 people killed in Mexico since the government deployed the army to combat trafficking in 2006, according to official figures.

Earlier this month, Sheinbaum angrily rejected an accusation by the United States that her government has an alliance with drug cartels.

"We categorically reject the slander made by the White House against the Mexican government about alliances with criminal organizations," the president wrote on social platform X at the time.

"If there is such an alliance anywhere, it is in the U.S. gun shops that sell high-powered weapons to these criminal groups," she added.

Tensions between the closely connected neighbors soared after the White House said Trump would slap tariffs of 25 percent on both Mexican and Canadian goods because of illegal immigration and drug smuggling.

The threatened tariffs have since been halted for 30 days.

© Agence France-Presse