Category Archives: Mexico

Fury in Mexico over Trump’s ‘slanderous’ claim of cartel links

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President Sheinbaum and politicians across the spectrum condemn accusation, which follows imposition of US tariffs

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has hit back at Donald Trump’s “slanderous” claim that her government had joined forces with drug bosses, amid anger and incredulity at the US president’s attack on the leaders of Latin America’s second biggest economy.

Trump made the claim on Saturday as he announced 25% tariffs against Mexico that the US said were a response to illegal immigration and the “intolerable alliance” between drug trafficking organisations and Mexico’s government, which had allegedly offered safe haven to “dangerous cartels”.

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Wall Street Journal editorial calls Trump tariffs ‘dumbest trade war in history’

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Some US business leaders reacted neutrally, while JP Morgan CEO says tariff threats can be used effectively

US business leaders are offering a mixed reaction to the steep trade tariffs that Donald Trump’s administration has imposed on Canada, Mexico and China, as the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal called it “the dumbest trade war in history”.

Donald Trump hit Canada and Mexico with a 25% tariff on imports, and China with 10%, on Saturday in a move that launched a new era of trade wars between the US and three of its largest trading partners. The tariffs against Canada tax oil and energy products at 10%.

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Trump warns Americans that tariffs may cause ‘pain’– US politics live

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US president says measures against Mexico, Canada and China will ‘all be worth the price’

After Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Volkswagen, Germany’s largest carmaker, said that tariffs would have a “harmful economic impact” on American consumers, as well as the international automotive industry.

German automakers say the tariffs will cause inflation for consumers.

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Top Democrats warn Trump tariffs will ‘hit Americans in their wallets’

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Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer leads charge against president’s tax plans on neighbors and allies

Top Democrats have slammed Donald Trump’s plans to impose serious tariffs on America’s neighbors and allies, warning that they will hit working families and small businesses hard.

Chuck Schumer, the minority leader in the US senate, led the charge by saying the president’s threatened tariffs would likely “hit Americans in their wallets”. “It would be nice if Donald Trump could start focusing on getting the prices down instead of making them go up.”

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AstraZeneca cancels £450m Liverpool investment, blaming UK government funding cuts – business live

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Pharmaceutical company says that it will not go ahead with investment at Speke, near Liverpool

Donald Trump’s White House will invoke emergency powers to introduce tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Reuters reports:

Two sources familiar with the matter said that Trump was expected to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) as the legal basis for the tariffs, declaring a national emergency over fentanyl overdoses that killed nearly 75,000 Americans in 2023 and illegal immigration.

The statute enacted in 1977 and modified after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 gives the president broad powers to impose economic sanctions in a crisis.

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Long-lost anti-fascist mural from 1930s restored and back on show in Mexico

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Philip Guston and Reuben Kadish’s The Struggle Against Terrorism revealed as some fear resurgence of fascism

A long-neglected 1930s mural in Mexico that warns about the rise of fascism has been revealed and restored – just as some historians say the world faces that threat once more.

The mural, which is titled The Struggle Against Terrorism, covers a 40ft wall in a colonial courtyard in Morelia, Michoacán, and depicts a history of persecution and resistance from biblical times to the modern day.

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Canada and Mexico can avoid tariffs before Saturday’s deadline, says Trump’s commerce pick

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Howard Lutnick testified at his US Senate confirmation hearing for his nomination to head commerce department

Donald Trump’s nominee to run the commerce department, Howard Lutnick, said on Wednesday that Canada and Mexico can avoid looming US tariffs if they act swiftly to close their borders to fentanyl, while vowing to slow China’s advancement in artificial intelligence.

Lutnick, a billionaire Wall Street CEO, at his US Senate confirmation hearing said he has advised Trump to pursue across-the-board tariffs country by country to restore “reciprocity” to America’s trading relationships and said he would erect stronger curbs on China’s access to US technology, including advanced AI semiconductors.

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Mexico to question Google over Gulf name change after Trump order

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Claudia Sheinbaum says US government does not have right to change name of Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America

Mexico will send a letter to Google to question its decision to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico for users of Google Maps in the US.

In a press conference on Wednesday, Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said the US government did not have the right to rename the entirety of the Gulf of Mexico, much of which is in international waters.

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Mexicans make Emilia Pérez parody poking fun at French stereotypes

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Spoof fires back at supposed inauthenticity of Oscar-tipped screen musical with a song-and-dance tale of boulangeries at war

The war of words between Mexico and France over trans gangster musical Emilia Pérez has heated up even more after the release of a spoof film called Johanne Sacreblu poking fun at French stereotypes.

Emilia Pérez, directed by Jacques Audiard and which is up for the best picture Oscar along with a best actress nomination for its star Karla Sofia Gascón, is the story of a cartel boss who hires a lawyer (played by Zoe Saldana) to enable a gender transition, and has attracted much criticism in Mexico, where it is supposedly set.

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Google Maps will rename Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America in US

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Tech firm to make change in line with Trump’s executive order, using both names in world outside US and Mexico

Google has confirmed it will rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America on Google Maps in the US, after an executive order from Donald Trump.

It will remain the Gulf of Mexico in Mexico, while users outside of the US and Mexico will see both names on Google Maps. The Alaskan peak Denali, the tallest mountain in North America, will also be changed to Mount McKinley in the US in line with Trump’s executive order on 20 January.

Reuters contributed to this report

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What would happen if the US military went after cartels on Mexican soil?

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Experts say any incursion could come with serious repercussions, include violence against US tourists

Evan Hafer, a popular veteran and founder of Black Rifle Coffee, was on Joe Rogan’s podcast after the November election. As with any Maga acolyte, the US-Mexico border figured prominently in his mind.

“If we declare war on the cartel, these dudes are not going to understand what the fuck is going on. They are in for a world of ultra-violence,” said Hafer, who served in the Green Berets and the CIA.

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Where can Labor turn for ideas on how to win the Australian election? How about Mexico?

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The ALP could follow the Mexican example where an incumbent won an election in a cost-of-living crisis by combining radical policies with symbolic measures

Last year, as an anti-incumbent wave swept the globe, Mexico’s ruling leftwing Morena party recorded a landslide victory.

Those who study Latin American politics say the result offers lessons for Australia’s Labor government in its quest to buck the global trend and retain power at this year’s general election.

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Scientists of potato blight pathogen?

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Researchers say study may help global efforts in controlling disease that still destroys crops today

It was a disaster that killed about 1 million people, devastating 19th century Ireland, but while the potato disease linked to the Irish famine is well known, a battle has raged over where it originated.

Scientists have long been divided over whether the fungus-like pathogen Phtytophthora infestans cropped up in the Andes or originated in Mexico.

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Film-maker Jacques Audiard apologises after Mexican outrage over Emilia Pérez

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The director of the award-winning musical about a trans cartel boss has said the film isn’t intended to be realistic, but he is sorry if things in it ‘seem shocking’

Emilia Pérez director Jacques Audiard has apologised after the film was engulfed in a wave of criticism over its depiction of Mexico.

A Spanish-language musical about a cartel boss who transitions to a woman, starring transgender actor Karla Sofía Gascón opposite Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez premiered in Mexico City on Wednesday before its Mexican release on 23 January.

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‘América Mexicana’: Mexico’s president responds to Trump with renaming of her own

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Claudia Sheinbaum joked about renaming the entire continent in retort to Trump’s ‘Gulf of America’ comments

Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, has responded to Donald Trump’s proposal to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America with a counter-proposal to rename North America.

Standing before a global map in her daily press briefing, Sheinbaum proposed dryly that the continent should be known as “América Mexicana”, or “Mexican America”, because an 1814 founding document that preceded Mexico’s constitution referred to it that way.

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Awards success of cartel boss musical Emilia Pérez prompts outrage in Mexico

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The film about Mexico has just one main actor who is Mexican, and Mexicans say it’s heavy with stereotypes and treats violence with frivolity

A musical about a Mexican cartel boss who fakes their death, transitions and is reborn as a heroine searching for the forcibly disappeared is sweeping international film awards, but prompted amusement and outrage in Mexico.

Emilia Pérez, directed by Jacques Audiard, has been largely praised by international critics, though some noted it risked trivialising extremely sensitive issues. It scooped the jury prize at Cannes before winning four Golden Globes on Sunday, including those for best musical or comedy and best non-English language film.

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Latin America’s rise in tuberculosis linked to imprisonment rates

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Study warns region’s exponential rise in incarceration is fuelling the disease, with cases increasing by 19% between 2015 and 2022

High incarceration rates in Latin America – the region with the world’s fastest-growing prison population – are exacerbating tuberculosis in a region that is bucking the global trend for falling incidents of the disease, experts have warned.

A study published in The Lancet Public Health journal has estimated that, contrary to previous assumptions, HIV/Aids is not the primary risk factor for tuberculosis in the region – as it remains in Africa, for example – but rather imprisonments.

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Mexico announces record drug seizure one week after Trump threatens tariffs

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Soldiers and marines discover drugs in Sinaloa, while separately authorities arrest more than 5,200 migrants

Mexican security forces have impounded more than a ton of fentanyl pills in what officials have called the biggest seizure of the synthetic opioid in the country’s history.

Soldiers and marines found the fentanyl at two properties in the northern state of Sinaloa, late on Tuesday – exactly a week after Donald Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico unless the two neighbouring countries cracked down on the flow of immigrants and drugs across their borders with the US.

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Mexico says Canada wishes it had its ‘cultural riches’ amid tariffs feud

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Leaders cast the other as ill-prepared after Trump threatens to apply 25% taxes on goods from both countries

Mexico’s president has said Canadians “could only wish they had the cultural riches” of her country as tensions mount between the two nations, caught in a feud over tariffs and trade exacerbated by Donald Trump.

The US president-elect threatened in a social media post last week to apply devastating levies of 25% on all goods and services from both countries, and to keep them in place until “such time as drugs, in particular fentanyl, and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country!”

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Missing Hawaii woman seen crossing into Mexico, police say

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Hannah Kobayashi disappeared voluntarily as she sought to ‘step away from modern connectivity’, LA police say

A Hawaii woman who vanished after landing in Los Angeles three weeks ago disappeared voluntarily as she sought to “step away from modern connectivity” and was last seen crossing into Mexico, police said at a news conference.

Hannah Kobayashi, 30, appeared unharmed as she walked alone with her luggage into a tunnel at the San Ysidro crossing about 125 miles (201km) south-east of Los Angeles around noon on 12 November the day after her family reported her missing, LA police said Monday. Authorities made the discovery after reviewing surveillance video from the US Customs and Border Protection late on Sunday.

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