Marco Rubio, the U.S. foreign policy chief, begins his first official visit to Mexico with one priority on the table: fentanyl trafficking, from which all the other negotiations stem. The State Secretary is there to finalize a new bilateral security agreement with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and other senior officials, but he arrived with a loaded weapon: President Donald Trump’s threat that the United States will declare a trade war with tariffs as its main ammunition. Various foreign affairs and security experts point in the same direction: the United States wants Mexico to continue dancing to its tune.

Sheinbaum has repeatedly stated that any agreement with the United States will be based on “shared responsibility, mutual trust, respect for sovereignty and territoriality, and cooperation without subordination.” This can be seen to mean, as she has also stated on several occasions, that the United States military will not conduct unilateral operations within Mexico.

Trump has repeatedly offered Mexico troops to combat the cartels, and the White House included several Mexican and Latin American criminal groups on its list of terrorist organizations last February. On Tuesday, Trump ordered his first major strike under this new framework: a U.S. military strike sank an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea that had set sail from Venezuela, killing all 11 crewmembers.

“For the first time in the last 30 years of relations, the United States is introducing a mix of mutually influencing issues into its negotiations with Mexico,” explains Raúl Benítez Manaut, a professor at the Observatory of the Mexico-United States Binational Relationship at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Previously, since the Free Trade Agreement, each issue was discussed separately: security with security, migration with migration, economy with economy. “But Donald Trump is mixing them all up: the issue of security cannot be separated from tariffs and migration.”

Since returning to the U.S. presidency in January 2025, Trump has wielded tariffs like a baseball bat against Mexico and the rest of the world. The Sheinbaum administration managed to dodge a first attack last April and was able to delay a second threat for 90 days in August. “Mexico has not yet stopped the cartels trying to turn all of North America into a drug trafficking playground,” said Trump. Around 80% of Mexican exports are destined for the United States.

“Marco Rubio’s visit is conditioned by domestic policies against Mexican citizens within the United States, directly related to whether Mexico helps stem the flow of drugs, primarily fentanyl,” says Benítez Manuat. “And the punishment for not complying is that the United States will be very harsh with tariffs or the renegotiation of the free trade agreement.” Rubio’s ultimate goal, he predicts, is a military cooperation agreement that would allow the United States to take direct action in conjunction with Mexico.

This is Rubio’s fourth trip as U.S. Secretary of State and it comes shortly after the DEA, the US anti-drug agency, unveiled Project Portero, the latest security clash between Mexico and the United States. The DEA claimed they had an agreement with their Mexican partners in “the fight against cartels,” but the Mexican president has denied any such agreement.

While the administration of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024), was marked by constant disagreements with the DEA, the arrival of Sheinbaum and Omar García Harfuch, her Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, seemed to improve the relationship. García Harfuch has a rapport with U.S. agencies, and since Trump’s second term, operations against fentanyl trafficking have been ongoing in Mexico. Once again facing the threat of a trade war, Mexico has extradited 55 drug traffickers in two batches, including Rafael Caro Quintero, a symbol for the United States for his role in the murder of DEA agent Enrique Kiki Camarena in 1985.

“From Mexico’s perspective, it is being asked to submit to the security interests of the United States,” argues Erubiel Tirado, coordinator of the National Security and Democracy Program at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. “We see this in the change in policy against the cartels, which has gone from López Obrador’s laissez-faire strategy to frontal attacks on laboratories and seizures of precursors used to make fentanyl; also in the surrender of drug lords with no legal basis, or the kidnapping of Ismael El Mayo Zambada.”

El Mayo, now awaiting sentencing in the United States after pleading guilty to leading the Sinaloa Cartel, was an unassailable criminal until he fell victim to a trap set by Joaquín Guzmán López, son of his partner Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán. According to Zambada’s version, he was on his way to mediate in a conflict, and upon arriving at the meeting, Guzmán López kidnapped him and put him on a plane to the United States, where they were both arrested. He is yet another of Mexico’s major drug lords to face justice north of the Rio Grande.

“This visit will surely formalize what is already being done. The question is how long they will continue to give in to the United States’ demands,” Tirado questions. “That the U.S. will continue to ask for things is a fact, and we are seeing a surrender to U.S. policies that I believe is unprecedented in modern Mexico.”

Catalina Pérez Correa, an academic and consultant on drug security and policy, points out that the United States blames other countries without assuming its own responsibility. “The United States demands a halt to the production and supply of illicit substances, primarily fentanyl, focusing its demands on Mexico,” she reasons, “but in the end, all the drugs that reach the United States, for example, a warehouse in New York, have to cross borders and several states. How is it that the authorities there don’t know this?”

Rubio, an ultra-conservative politician who has never had any kind words for Mexico, comes with the stated mission to “dismantle cartels,halt fentanyl trafficking, end illegal immigration, reduce the trade deficit, and promote economic prosperity and counter malign extra continental actors.” He has an ace up his sleeve: the threat remains on the negotiating table. The deadline for the tariffs is less than 60 days away.

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