The United States of America and its southern neighbor Mexico could both have a female president within the next few months – their first.
But even if Kamala Harris makes it to the White House, she can expect few sisterly favors from Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum.
Sheinbaum, 62, was elected in June on a radical left-wing platform, siding with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and those calling for a new world order — a multipolar order that puts America and the West on the same page.
Even before Sheinbaum officially takes office on October 1, she is already expressing serious concerns in Washington.
Take, for example, the most sensitive issue: the porous southern border.
Mexico’s first female president, radical leftist Claudia Sheinbaum, has a history of provoking the White House
Now Washington worries that Mexico could become a Chinese vassal — and a listening post for America’s foreign enemies
Migrants from China cross the border into Texas in April 2023
While American voters blame Mexico for the influx of migrants, drugs and crime, Sheinbaum points the finger at America — and the American hunger for recreational drugs that, she says, fuels criminal cartels and smuggling rings.
If migrants are still the third most pressing issue in the US presidential election, Sheinbaum says the question is whether ordinary Mexicans feel differently.
They are probably more concerned about the vast quantities of American-made firearms flowing the other way, she says, which are undermining Mexican democracy.
Mexico’s incoming president is also happy to ignore US leadership on foreign policy.
Despite her own Jewish heritage, Sheinbaum is a fervent anti-Zionist critic of Israel, and she does not share Washington’s instinctive opposition to Vladimir Putin.
Despite Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine, Sheinbaum turned down President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent invitation to visit Kiev — and was rumored to have dismissed him as a “drug addict” in the process. (The same criticism, however unfounded, has also been leveled at Putin.)
Sheinbaum has even joined those calling for a new world order, the kind of multipolar order that Chinese Presidents Putin and Xi are actively pursuing.
This is a world in which America and the West are stripped back to their essence, in which the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, and in which medium-sized countries – such as Mexico – are given a ‘fair’ chance.
And it is with Xi that a new, powerful fear has emerged among Republicans and Democrats alike – that Mexico is locked in a conflict with America’s greatest geopolitical adversary, amid growing fears that the country could become a Chinese vassal in crucial ways.
Sheinbaum’s Morena party has led a massive expansion in trade relations, with China investing hundreds of billions of dollars south of the border to produce cars, computers, construction equipment and more — goods that often end up back in the U.S.
Kuka Home Furniture near Monterrey is one of many Chinese companies investing in Mexico with factories like this one
Hofusan Industrial Park under construction in northern Mexico. Many Chinese companies have invested in the park to shorten their supply chains – and export goods to the United States
China’s President Xi now has significant influence in Mexico, where Chinese companies have invested billions of dollars
Oddly enough, this is partly due to the “on-shoring” policies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, which were designed to create shorter, more resilient supply chains and have helped bring back industrial production from China and other countries.
But those factories have not moved to California or Arizona, but to “friendly” neighbor Mexico, the US partner in the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The stark trade statistics that point to Mexico’s success in replacing China as the US’s top trading partner obscure the reality that much of the economic boom has involved assembling everything from Chinese high-tech to Chinese furniture in vast new industrial parks in northern Mexico – built by the Chinese.
Batches of components from China are shipped directly to America as finished products, labeled “Made in Mexico.”
Then there’s the fentanyl trade. While cocaine travels to the U.S. from Colombia, Bolivia and Peru, the flood of lab-made fentanyl originates across the Pacific in China — before eventually crossing the U.S. border in truckloads of goods.
Mexico’s booming trade with China – including “Mexican” products destined for re-export to the US – can only help the narco-gangs.
Goods and drugs are not the only imports involved. Chinese themselves are the fastest growing group among illegal migrants and potential migrants.
Most disturbing, however, is the possibility that the millions of Chinese cell phones, computers, and possibly “smart” consumer goods now being produced in Mexico may contain products related to intelligence.
As the recent Israeli pager attacks on Lebanon showed, even household electronics can be used against the careless.
Satellite images reveal FOUR Chinese spy posts stationed in Cuba, just 100 miles off the Florida coast, that could steal U.S. military secrets. China’s ambitions to expand its global intelligence gathering capabilities.
Suspected Chinese eavesdropping station under construction in Cuba
Only this week, the US Commerce Department proposed banning all Chinese components from US vehicles that are connected to the internet, citing security concerns. How this will ever be enforced remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, major Chinese technology companies including phone giant Huawei, ZTE and Hikvision – all banned or sanctioned by America and its Western partners – have set up shop across the border in Mexico.
There they form the heart of major infrastructure projects, including telephone networks and the Felipe Ángeles International Airport in Mexico City.
No wonder Washington fears its southern neighbor is becoming a back door for Chinese intelligence services
America, already concerned about the spy bases China has built in Cuba, is now asking: Could Mexico become a giant Cuba—a listening post for hostile powers right on its doorstep? That is exactly what many now believe.
To be fair to Sheinbaum, she has no desire to turn Mexico into an impoverished police state like Cuba.
By improving the lives of many Mexicans, Morena has won elections at the national and provincial levels – and with flying colors.
Thanks to the two-thirds majority in the Mexican parliament, the new president can implement any measure she proposes.
It is certainly in her rational self-interest to keep the Mexican economy booming, to crack down on the cartels and, crucially, to find a modus vivendi with Washington. But politics is rarely that simple.
Sheinbaum can be described as an “aggressive neutralist,” determined to forge her own path, even if it means crossing the United States.
By casting herself as a Mexican nationalist, Sheinbaum was able to defeat a pro-Yankee rival in June. The temptations of gestural politics and poking the gringo seem dangerously tempting, especially as the Mexican economy deteriorates.
A family of five claiming to be from Guatemala and a man claiming to be from Peru walk through the desert after crossing the border wall in the Tucson area of the Mexico border.
Washington, for its part, is no stranger to the blame game. And there will be plenty to share if the border proves unmanageable and Chinese influence on the other side continues to grow.
What happens when relationships deteriorate?
Would the new president follow Venezuela down the path of elected populism, where economic decisions are made disastrously wrong to buy votes and then political power is used to silence critics?
Remember how rich Venezuela was before the one-party socialist regime strangled the economy?
It is telling that Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador – the outgoing president of Mexico and a patron of Sheinbaum – saw “no sign” of fraud in the recent election that returned Nicolas Maduro to power in Venezuela, even though most observers believed his “victory” was clearly corrupt.
A “New Cuba” on the southern border would certainly be a major problem for the next U.S. administration, no matter who wins in November. A “New Venezuela” — a giant failed state — would be far worse.