The Trump administration’s global charm offensive continues apace.
On Wednesday, President Trump posted footage on his Truth Social platform of B2 stealth fighter jets dropping bombs to the soundtrack of “Bomb Iran,” a parody of the Beach Boys’ 1960’s song “Barbara Ann”, just days after imposing a fragile — or in the words of the former British diplomat Craig Murray, “phantom” — ceasefire on Iran and Israel. Trump also threatened to impose tariffs on Spain after the Pedro Sánchez government had the temerity to question the wisdom of tripling Spain’s defence spending over the next ten years before falling into line.
On the same day, Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi, seemed to suggest that the US has updated its list of “foreign adversaries” by throwing Mexico, the US’ largest trade partner, into the mix alongside more established names like Iran, Russia and China. The revelation came during a Senate Expenditures Committee hearing in which Bondi praised to the rafters Trump’s leadership in the face of international crises, such as the conflict in the Middle East, as well as his role in protecting US citizens from external threats, including the drug overdose epidemic.
“We will not be intimidated and we will keep America safe because of President Trump’s leadership. Not only against Iran, but also against Russia, China and Mexico,” Bondi said in response to questions by the chicken-hawk neo-con Senator Lyndsey Graham. “In the face of any foreign adversary, whether it tries to kill us physically or by overdosing our children with drugs, we will do everything in our power, thanks to his leadership, to keep America safe.”
#Actualidad 🙄 Entre lo absurdo y lo ridículo
La fiscal estadounidense Pam Bondi afirma que #México forma parte de la lista de “adversarios”. Una declaración que no solo carece de sustento, sino que exhibe su total ignorancia. pic.twitter.com/EdjCGDdc5v
— El Soberano (@ElSoberanoMX) June 26, 2025
Graham asked whether Mexico was helping the US with its drug problem, to which Bondi responded:
Senator, that conversation might be better to have in a classified setting.
However, Bondi did say that the “Sinaloa Cartel has wreaked havoc in our country, and continues to wreak havoc. And fentanyl keeps coming in.” What she didn’t mention is that deaths caused by fentanyl have fallen by 26% from a 2023 peak, according to estimates by the CDC.
Graham, meanwhile, was happy to fill in the gaps, alleging that half of Mexico is run by the cartels:
We’re never going to be safe here until we get Mexico to change its strategy… Enough, enough with Mexico. Enough of that crap. We are going to go after them with or without help from Mexico because I do not know what the right response is against a neighbour who allows this type of illegal thing to enter our country and kill more young people than any other.
A Convenient Scapegoat
Lyndsey Graham has been trying to pin all the blame for the US’ opioid crisis on Mexico for some time now while trying to obfuscate the much darker truth: as Peter Isackson pointed out in 2019, “the very real opioid crisis did not originate south of the border, but is a totally domestic problem whose source has now been clearly identified. The culprit: OxyContin, a multibillion dollar opioid manufactured and marketed in the United States by the very American firm, Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler family.”
Granted, in recent years the US’s opioid crisis has morphed into a fentanyl crisis, much of which appears to be entering the US via Mexico. However, as Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has repeatedly noted, the US tends to view its narcotics problem exclusively through a supply-side lens. That way, all of the blame for the US’ opioid crisis can be shifted overseas, diverting attention away from the role played by US pharmaceutical companies such as the Sacklers’ Purdue Pharma in starting and fuelling the opioid epidemic.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to ramp up the pressure on Mexico. A couple of weeks ago, Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security accused Sheinbaum of encouraging the violent protests against ICE raids in Los Angeles. Donald Trump’s son, Eric, also made incendiary remarks on Fox News while drawing a comparison between Iran’s recent attacks on Israel and a hypothetical attack by Mexico on the US: “if Mexico were to fire rockets into the US, I think they would be decapitated in about four seconds.”
‘Si México nos atacara, los decapitaríamos en 4 segundos’, dice Eric Trump, hijo de Trump, al comparar el conflicto entre Israel e Irán. pic.twitter.com/nJGRMyfCgt
— Manuel Lopez San Martin (@MLopezSanMartin) June 17, 2025
The US is also escalating its financial war against the Mexican cartels, some of which Trump recently designated as terrorist organisations. This week, the Treasury Department accused three Mexican financial institutions of participating in money laundering on behalf of groups involved in fentanyl trafficking between Mexico and the US.
They included the brokerage firm Vector Casa de Bolsa, which is owned by the Mexican businessman Alfonso Romo, who served as former President Andrés López Manual Obrador’s point man with the national and international business community during AMLO’s first two years in power. As we reported in February, there is growing speculation in Mexico that government agencies in Washington are looking to formally accuse AMLO of having ties with the drug cartels.
This is all part of an intensifying war of words — and actions — the US is waging against its southern neighbour, using the excuse of the Global War on Drugs to justify ever increasing encroachments on Mexico’s already limited sovereignty.
Recent months have seen US spy planes increasing their surveillance at the Mexican border, the US’ renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, the appointment of a former Green Beret and CIA agent as US ambassador to Mexico, the imposition of a tax on all remittance payments issued from the US and now the threat to designate Mexico as a US “adversary.” As far as I’m aware, for Mexico to be officially considered a foreign adversary, an executive order must be issued by the White House.
In one of his first acts as US ambassador to Mexico, Ron Johnson tweeted out the following veiled warning about China’s threat to critical infrastructure and food security:
We’re not just competing with China—we are facing new threats to critical infrastructure and food security. From biopathogens to supply chains, today’s risks are different. 🇺🇸🇲🇽 must face them together as strategic allies and top trade partners.
— Embajador Ronald Johnson (@USAmbMex) June 4, 2025
The Chinese embassy in Mexico responded with the following message:
“Being an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but being a friend is fatal.” A true friend doesn’t forcibly plunder your land, discriminate against migrants, or arbitrarily impose tariffs on you. Equity, respect, cooperation, and shared benefits constitute the proper way for countries to treat each other. Our Mexican friends are fully aware of the “two-faced” tricks of feigning cooperation while stabbing in the back.
Russian Offers of Help
At the same time, Moscow is pushing for closer relations with Mexico. Speaking at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) last weekend, Russia’s Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev announced that Russia is ready to supply liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Mexico as well as share some of its technologies and know how. The offer of help comes at a time when Mexico is importing a staggering 70% of the natural gas it uses from from the United States, most of which arrives in pipelines and is used for electricity generation and industry.
The risks of such dependence became glaringly evident during the Texas winter storm in 2021, when power outages caused millions in losses in Mexico, as a result of which the Mexican government has sought to expand its strategic gas storage capacity. The New York Times even described Mexico’s outsized — and growing — reliance on US natural gas as its Achille’s heel in its relations with the Trump administration.* Now, it seems that Russia is keen to lend Mexico a helping hand.
“We are already working with Mexico,” Tsivilev said, according to a report by TASS. “We have state-of-the-art technologies in the area of liquefied gas. We are ready to share those technologies and supply liquefied natural gas.”
It is not only in the natural gas sector that Russia has offered to help. With Mexico’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos, aka Pemex, looking to reopen closed wells in a bid to boost domestic production, Moscow has spied an opportunity. According to CNN Español, Minister Tsivilev claims that Russia has technological solutions for boosting efficiency in the production and refining of oil in complex fields, and is willing to share its expertise in managing the entire energy value chain, “from extraction to filling”.
For the moment, neither the Mexican government nor Pemex have responded publicly to Russia’s offer, despite the fact it was reiterated by the Russian Embassy in Mexico City. Mexico’s government knows it must tread carefully in its relations with the US’ two main strategic rivals, China and Russia, in part because there is no telling how the Trump administration could respond but also because of the oversized dependence of Mexico’s economy on exports to the US, which account for close to a third of the country’s GDP.
A Surreal Spat
This reality was recently underscored by a surreal spat between US Deputy Secretary of State (and former US ambassador to Mexico) Christopher Landau and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) over an academic paper published by researchers at the university commending Latin America’s growing trade with China.
Written by José Briceño Ruiz, a researcher at the UNAM’s Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CIALC), the study argues that China is a reliable partner for Latin America given the differences in its trade agenda and practices vis-a-vis the US. Briceño Ruiz cites examples such as the $9.2 billion credit lines China has offered Latin American countries, as well as new investments in infrastructure and cooperation in areas such as clean energy, telecommunications and artificial intelligence in Latin America.
Briceño Ruiz also praised China’s model of cooperation with other countries, primarily based on the principle of sovereign equality, which means respecting each country’s right to govern itself without interference. “Non-interference in each other’s internal affairs” is a notion that no doubt appeals to a country like Mexico that has suffered multiple US and European military incursions and invasions since gaining independence from Spain in 1810.
By contrast, Trump 2.0 tends to view Latin America as a region “dependent and subordinate” to the changing politics, whims and needs of the United States, and in its first half year in office it has repeatedly threatened to invade Panama and Mexico.
In response to the paper, which is about China’s relationship to Latin America as a whole, not just Mexico, Landau, who is one of the more diplomatic members of Trump’s senior cabinet, posted a scathing tweet:
“I must confess that I find this argument unusual. USA. The U.S. is a much more important trade partner for Mexico ($839 billion in total volume of trade in goods in 2024) than China ($138 billion). In addition, Mexico maintains a huge trade surplus with the US (+$171 billion), while it has a huge trade deficit with China (-$120 billion dollars) with China. Therefore, the “cooperation” offered by China has benefited its manufacturing base much more than Mexico’s. That’s the way it is all over the world. Globally, China is the country with the largest trade surplus of goods in the history of humanity.
Which is true, as is Landau’s point about Mexico’s growing trade deficit with China, which is largely the result of Trump 1.0’s tariffs on China and Chinese firms subsequently taking advantage of the nearshoring trend by setting up shop in Mexico. Most of the goods China exports to Mexico do not stay in Mexico; they are used to assemble products destined for the US market. As we have noted before, China and Mexico are not just trade partners but direct competitors vying for the custom of the world’s largest consumer market, which is trying to wean itself off Chinese products.
However, what Landau fails to mention is that China doesn’t go round threatening to invade its largest trade partners or topple their governments if they don’t do what it wants. And that is a big difference when it comes to international relations. As Harold Pinter said in his 2005 Nobel acceptance speech (h/t Kevin Reinhardt), “I suggest that US foreign policy can still be defined as ‘kiss my ass or I’ll kick your head in.’ But of course it doesn’t put it like that. It talks of ‘low intensity conflict…’”
Over the past few years, Mexico has clashed repeatedly with the US over a litany of issues, from USAID and NED’s funding of domestic political opposition groups to Washington’s attempts to prevent Mexico from banning GMO corn for human consumption; to Mexico’s refusal to support project Ukraine or US-EU sanctions against Russia despite concerted pressure; to presidential candidate Donald Trump’s threats to send kill teams to Mexico to take out the country’s drug kingpins — a threat that should not be taken lightly given US-Mexican history.
This list is certain to grow over the coming months, as the US seeks to impose its will on its southern neighbour, locking it into an increasingly stifling and abusive relationship. But as things currently stand, there is not much that Mexico will be able to do about it.
Given the scale of its economic dependence on the US, which is largely the intended consequence of NAFTA and US-friendly economic policies pursued by generations of Mexican leaders, some on the CIA’s payroll; its geographic location — “so far from God, so close to the United States”, as Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz is alleged to have once said; and the very real risk of retaliation from the US, the Sheinbaum government is unlikely to take up Moscow’s offer of energy assistance. For the same reasons, it is unlikely to accept any of the invitations to join the BRICS-plus association or China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
As Russian Embassy spokesman Andrei Zemskiy recently acknowledged, the USMCA makes it much more difficult for Mexico to join the BRICS — a goal that Russia is openly pursuing. In fact, as readers may recall, Mexico’s was one of the 14 flags featured on the purely symbolic BRICS banknote Vladymir Putin flashed for the cameras at the 16th BRICS summit in Kazan last year.
As we noted at the time, the Mexican flag’s inclusion amounted to little more than expert trolling from Putin. Mexico’s economy is simply too integrated with the US and Canada’s for it to be able to join the BRICS.
But if anyone is able to change this dynamic, it is the current Trump administration, either through its constant bullying or its wilful destruction of the USMCA, a trade deal that Trump himself brokered and which Trump himself called the “best trade deal ever” just five years ago. Simply by calling Mexico an adversary and comparing the country with the likes of Russia, China and Iran, Trump’s attorney general has helped further alienate the US’ most important trade partner while further arousing anti-US sentiment among the Mexican public.
* Other potential points of vulnerability include Mexico’s dependence on imports of US-grown, government subsidised GMO corn, its main stable and animal foodstuff, rice and beans; Pemex’s persistent financial weakness and over-indebtedness, which could trigger cascading credit downgrades from US ratings agencies; the economy’s heavy reliance on remittances, which account for over 3% of GDP.
