How has Mexico’s business sector responded to Trump’s tariff announcement?

Prominent Mexican concern organizations person decried the U.S. government’s determination to enforce 25% tariffs connected Mexican and Canadian goods portion besides lamenting the menace of reciprocal tariffs successful April, saying the actions volition weaken North American competitiveness.

U.S. President Donald Trump made authoritative the 25% levy connected Monday night, prompting Tuesday’s nationalist statements from AmCham Mexico (an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) and the Mexican Employers Federation (Coparmex).

Un futuro próspero se construye con certeza.

Los aranceles lad contraproducentes para nuestro sistema de coproducción regional. Ahora es el momento de redoblar esfuerzos para fortalecer a Norteamérica.

Comunicado de prensa:
🔎📑 https://t.co/SCU5uJN8Nz pic.twitter.com/NexMPUJ557

— American Chamber/Mexico (@AmChamMexico) March 4, 2025

In a societal media post, AmCham called tariffs “counterproductive to our determination coproduction system,” suggesting that they “threatened the region’s aboriginal prospects” by causing uncertainty.

In a property release, AmCham said, “The United States, Mexico and Canada person built a beardown and competitory determination system … [driving] maturation and occupation creation.” 

The tariffs enactment each of this astatine risk, AmCham said, insisting the argumentation would backfire. Instead, it argued, the 3 economies “should physique connected a winning look that strengthens North America’s presumption arsenic the world’s astir dynamic economical bloc.”

AmCham besides urged a beardown nationalist effect to the tariffs. 

“Now is the clip to redouble our efforts to fortify North America,” it said, adding, “Now is the clip to treble down connected cooperation, stableness and shared prosperity.”

In its ain property release, Coparmex lamented the tariff decision, calling it “a measurement backward successful commercialized relations and an enactment that volition weaken North American competitiveness.” 

Luis de la Calle, who was a negotiator for Mexico for NAFTA. In a caller paper interview, helium advised President Sheinbaum that the U.S.’s caller tariff argumentation is unsustainable. (Union Pacific)

Coparmex besides said Trump’s enactment “contradicts the principles of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and volition make uncertainty successful cardinal economical sectors … The disruption of strategical sectors risks disintegrating North American productivity.”

The Mexican federation besides warned that the determination “will provoke recession successful Mexico and precocious ostentation successful the U.S.”

Former NAFTA negotiator weighs in

Luis de la Calle, an Economy Ministry authoritative during some the Ernesto Zedillo (1994–2000) and Vicente Fox (2000–2006) administrations, urged the Sheinbaum medication to stay calm, arguing that Trump’s tariff argumentation “is unsustainable.”

In an interrogation with media enactment La Silla Rota, de la Calle said the tariffs are improbable to past long, truthful the Mexican authorities should absorption connected “preserving [the USMCA] and the anticipation of [North American] integration.”

De la Calle — a subordinate of the Mexican delegation that negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement successful the aboriginal 1990s, the predecessor of the USMCA — called connected Sheinbaum to beryllium calculated and calm successful negotiations with Trump. Coincidentally, this is the strategy the Mexican president has relied upon passim the past month, which has won her praise for her diplomacy.

Sheinbaum continued to “keep a chill head” Tuesday, offering a measured effect to the U.S. tariffs successful opposition to the exertion of contiguous retaliatory tariffs announced by China and Canada.

With reports from La Silla Rota and The Guardian