March 5, 2025 (EIRNS)—President Claudia Sheinbaum reported today that she has received an enthusiastic response to her call for Mexicans to join her in a mass meeting at noon this coming Sunday, March 9, in the central plaza of Mexico City, the Zócalo, where she will announce Mexico’s response to the United States’ unilateral imposition of 25% tariffs on Mexican exports to the U.S. The Trump administration announced the tariffs on the grounds that Mexico has not done enough to stop fentanyl from entering the United States.
“We are, proudly, a free, independent and sovereign country. Now is the time to defend Mexico and its sovereignty,” she said in issuing her call on March 4.
“I call on the people of Mexico, all of us, to face this challenge together. To remain united. I reiterate, it is time to defend Mexico and its sovereignty. We must be attentive and calm, with a cool head. Our people and our blessed nation are very strong and powerful.… Cooperation and coordination, yes; subordination and interventionism, no. … Mexico is to be respected; we are equal nations.”
President Sheinbaum pointed to some facts: that from the time she took office on October 1, 2024 through January 2025, Mexico’s Customs and Border Protection figures show that fentanyl seizures in the U.S. coming from Mexico had fallen by 50%; that a study by the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. found that 80% of those arrested at U.S. ports of entry for fentanyl trafficking between 2019 and 2024 were U.S. citizens; that in the five months of her government, 75% of the 6,998 firearms seized came from the United States, a statistic which matches the U.S. Justice Department’s January 2025 report that 74% of the high-powered weapons seized in Mexico come illegally from the United States.