With a trade war brewing, President Trump gave the Mexican president a sign of grudging respect: “You’re tough,” he told her in a phone call last month, according to four people with knowledge of the exchange.
By their most recent conversation, the two leaders were trading compliments and carving out a reprieve from some tariffs in real time, the people familiar with the call said.
When Claudia Sheinbaum became president on Oct. 1, the first woman to ever govern Mexico, there were doubts about how she would handle the relationship with the United States, especially if Mr. Trump won the election.
A proud leftist and a scientist by training, Ms. Sheinbaum had little foreign policy experience in her previous post as mayor of Mexico City. Unlike her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who got along with Mr. Trump and shared his bombastic style, Ms. Sheinbaum was seen more as a reserved technocrat than a political show woman.
But she has surprised many in her country not only by fending off a barrage of threats from Mr. Trump, but also by forging, somewhat improbably, a relationship of budding public respect with her American counterpart.
“Nobody expected her to be this good, or this lucky,” said Carlos Bravo Regidor, a Mexican political analyst. “Whatever it is, it’s working.”
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump made Mexico a clear target of his attacks. Once elected, he vowed to impose tariffs on America’s southern neighbor until fentanyl stopped flowing into the United States.
Yet lately, he has been lavishing praise on Ms. Sheinbaum, even as he excoriates more seasoned world leaders. He’s called her “a wonderful woman” with whom he has a “very good” relationship.
Her calm demeanor and the results she’s delivered on migration and fentanyl seem to have won his respect, officials from both countries say, impressing key members of his administration, including deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who has oversight of domestic policy and is a homeland security adviser.
Her rapport with the American president is helped in part by the contrast with Mr. Trump’s much more contentious relationship with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, who left the post on Friday.
At the start of their most recent conversation last week, Ms. Sheinbaum spent about five minutes ticking through everything she had done to secure the border and fight fentanyl trafficking, according to two people familiar with the talks. Ahead of the call, she had sent Mr. Trump data to back up her points. She suggested that the tariffs would only make it harder for her to explain this level of cooperation to her citizens.
Mr. Trump stayed silent for a long beat after she stopped talking — and then, after complimenting Ms. Sheinbaum, abruptly launched into an attack on Canada, the people said. He asked what Ms. Sheinbaum thought of Mr. Trudeau. She said she didn’t talk much with the Canadian leader. Mr. Trump said she was lucky.
At the end of the call, the people said, Mr. Trump offered to exclude many Mexican goods from tariffs and then started dictating, out loud, a Truth Social post announcing the deal. Ms. Sheinbaum and her team were elated.
Mr. Trump posted that he was delaying tariffs until April 2 “out of respect” for the Mexican president, adding: “Thank you to President Sheinbaum for your hard work and cooperation!” Ms. Sheinbaum said the call was “excellent and respectful” in a post on X.
She has also made bold moves against drug cartels known for exacting revenge on those who threaten them. Perhaps the most drastic: the transfer of 29 drug lords to the United States to face criminal charges in late February. That move was a colossal blow to organized criminal groups and sent a message that Ms. Sheinbaum was serious about combating them.
Soon after the handover, Ms. Sheinbaum’s cellphone was hacked, according to several people familiar with the matter. A spokesman for the Mexican presidency declined to comment.
While cooperating intensely with Mr. Trump, Ms. Sheinbaum has also drummed up nationalist sentiment at home, reminding Mexicans that the country is “not a colony of anyone,” and repeating some version of the phrase “coordination, yes; submission, never.”
In recent months, her approval ratings in Mexico have rocketed above 75 percent.
Still, despite Ms. Sheinbaum’s efforts, Mexico hasn’t been shielded from Mr. Trump’s unpredictability. Like the rest of the world, the country awaits another round of potential tariffs on April 2. It’s also contending with steel and aluminum tariffs imposed this week, as well as duties on goods not included in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which were about half of the country’s U.S. exports last year, according to a White House official not authorized to speak publicly. The trade disruptions have already rattled the Mexican economy.
But as Mr. Trump continues to hammer Canada with new threats of steep levies and annexation, Mexicans are mostly enjoying a break from the drama — at least for now.
“This is like a real life episode of ‘The Apprentice,’” said Mr. Bravo Regidor, referring to the 2000s reality series starring Mr. Trump. “The purpose of the whole show is to survive until the next episode, and she has been able to do that so far.”
The two leaders have come a long way in just a few months.
Mr. Trump has charged that Mexico is run by cartels and threatened military strikes on Mexican soil. And while Mr. Trump often publicly said he had a terrific relationship with Ms. Sheinbaum’s predecessor and mentor, Mr. López Obrador, he also harbored concerns about the former Mexican leader’s management of cartel violence.
Mr. Trump and some key members of his team were initially skeptical of Ms. Sheinbaum, two people familiar with his thinking said, in part because of media coverage that portrayed her as an ideologically committed leftist.
Early on, her rhetoric toward Mr. Trump was at times adversarial.
At a news conference in November, she read aloud a sharply worded letter she had written Mr. Trump responding to his threat of tariffs. “For every tariff, there will be a response in kind, until we put at risk our shared enterprises,” she said.
The missive was viewed by some members of Mr. Trump’s transition team as scolding and an unnecessary provocation, according to five people familiar with their thinking.
Then, in early January, after Mr. Trump said he would rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, Ms. Sheinbaum joked that the United States be renamed “Mexican America.” The comments were widely interpreted as poking fun at Mr. Trump.
But her style started to shift as some of her advisers began hearing that confrontational tactics would only anger Mr. Trump.
She won points by deciding to speak to Mr. Trump in English on their calls, three people familiar with talks said. Mr. López Obrador spoke to Mr. Trump in Spanish, through an interpreter, and talked for such a long time that he often bored the president, officials said.
By contrast, Ms. Sheinbaum has come to her conversations with the president extremely prepared, three U.S. and Mexican officials said. She has studied his speeches, watching the videos, to try to understand Mr. Trump’s communication style.
Her tone with him has been calm, and she has come across to officials as serious and transparent. That even-keeled approach has made an impression particularly because it’s so different from that of Mr. Trudeau, who has had more contentious exchanges with Mr. Trump.
Mexico observers pointed to the escalating spat between the United States and Canada as a sign that perhaps Ms. Sheinbaum’s lighter touch with Mr. Trump has shielded the country from further disruptions.
“She has been dignified and discreet in not picking a fight,” said Enrique Krauze, a prominent Mexican historian. “Her natural characteristics have worked well, for now, in the face of a personality like Trump.”
Maria Abi-Habib contributed reporting.
