The White House issued a Fact Sheet on Feb. 1 on the imposition of tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico, which asserted that “the Mexican drug trafficking organizations have an intolerable alliance with the government of Mexico. The government of Mexico has afforded safe havens for the cartels to engage in the manufacturing and transportation of dangerous narcotics, which collectively have led to the overdose deaths of hundreds of thousands of American victims. This alliance endangers the national security of the United States, and we must eradicate the influence of these dangerous cartels.”
President Claudia Sheinbaum responded sharply on her X account:
“We categorically reject the White House’s slander against the Government of Mexico, accusing it of having alliances with criminal organizations, as well as any intention to interfere in our territory.” She countered by pointing to well-documented arms trafficking into Mexico from U.S. government-controlled armories: “If such an alliance exists anywhere, it is in the armories of the United States that sell high-powered weapons to these criminal groups—as demonstrated by the U.S. Department of Justice itself in January of this year.”
