Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is the master of a high-stakes political balancing act. She’s kept her populist support in Mexico while managing what other U.S. allies have been unable to do – standing firm against President Trump’s aggressive foreign policy and trade initiatives while avoiding his wrath. But that balancing act is becoming more difficult and will be tested in the months to come.

Known as “la Doctora” for her academic credentials, Sheinbaum’s first test came early in her presidency, when she cooly navigated threats of steep U.S. tariffs on Mexican goods last year by focusing on diplomatic talks and promising increased U.S.-Mexico cooperation on migration and drug trafficking. That won Mexico a pause that eventually resulted in most Mexican exports free of U.S. tariffs. Canada and other countries had a much tougher time while becoming embroiled in very public spats with Trump.

Sheinbaum continued to face other challenges from her neighbor to the north. Those included the Trump administration’s extraterritorial pursuit of Mexican drug cartel members and its oil blockade to longtime ally Cuba. And she has handled them with aplomb. “Sheinbaum has used very careful rhetoric,” said Willian LeoGrande, a government professor and Latin American specialist at American University. “She’s been very careful not to say mean things about Donald Trump while firmly asserting Mexico’s independence and sovereignty.” While Sheinbaum does not “call out Trump by name,” Mexicans see her standing up to the U.S. and “people can read between the lines,” LeoGrande said.

Pamela Starr, a professor of international relations and specialist in U.S.-Mexico relations at the University of Southern California, said it helps that Trump likes the Mexican president. He’s called her a “great person” and “elegant woman,” Starr said. “Trump responds better to people he likes.”

Since Trump began his second term in the White House, Sheinbaum has spoken to Trump on the phone 18 times, Starr said. Those conversations without a translator because Sheinbaum is fluent in English and that has helped the relationship. Another factor that helps is Mexico’s president responds in a non-emotional way to challenges Trump sends her way. “She responds by saying ‘we will discuss it and I will give you my decision in 3 days,’” Starr said. “She buys time and does not react.”

The first woman and the first Jewish person to be elected Mexico’s president, Sheinbaum, 64, is the daughter of scientists– her father was a chemist and her mother a biologist – who were active in left-wing politics. “She was born and raised in the Mexican left,” said Starr. “She’s always had politics at the dinner table.”

With that upbringing, it’s not surprising Sheinbaum’s life also followed two career tracks that appear to have little in common. She earned a bachelor's degree in physics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, followed by a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in engineering.

Pursuing her doctorate in the early 1990s, she worked at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Living with her husband and two small children in a modest house provided by the university helped her perfect her English, and perhaps more importantly, become familiar with American culture and politics. A spokeswoman for the laboratory said Sheinbaum conducted detailed analyses of Mexico’s transportation energy use, as well as the energy use trends of Mexico’s buildings and industry sectors and continued to collaborate with Berkely Lab scientists after her return to Mexico.

Like most Mexican leftists who distrusted U.S. capitalism, Sheinbaum protested the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during her time at the laboratory. Perhaps ironically, she now has to negotiate a successor to that key trade pact with Trump.

Sheinbaum plunged into politics in her late 20s, joining the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 1989. She left the PDR in 2014 to join former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in a splinter movement called Morena. Sheinbaum political rise was swift, and she was elected mayor of Tlalpan and afterwards Head of Government in Mexico City. Like Trump, she became president in 2024.
While López Obrador was her mentor, Sheinbaum does not do what he sometimes did – take actions that made political sense but did not reach objectives. She looks at things from a scientific perspective and focuses on facts and things that will work, Starr said.

But keeping her equanimity when it comes to the U.S. is becoming more challenging for Sheinbaum. LeoGrande said Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Cuba, which began in January shortly after the U.S. capture of Venezuelan president and key Cuban ally Nicolas Maduro, has been the hardest Trump move for Sheinbaum.

That’s because Mexico has been a steadfast ally of Cuba, and was the only nation in the Americas to reject the trade embargo imposed by the U.S. 66 years ago. Yet, after Maduro was seized, Trump cut off vital oil shipments from Venezuela to Cuba and successfully pressured Mexico to do the same. That put Cuba’s already feeble economy in crisis.

At a press conference, Sheinbaum said Mexico “has every right to send fuel” to Cuba, especially since there are private hotels and other companies on the island that need that fuel and the transactions would not be “’government to government.”

“Sheinbaum asserted Mexico’s right to send oil to Cuba, but she hasn’t really done it,” said LeoGrande.
According to Starr, Sheinbaum replaced the oil shipments with humanitarian aid and is working behind the scenes to get a green light to resume shipments. “She had no choice,” Starr said of Sheinbaum’s cutoff of oil shipments to Cuba.

The Mexican president is aware the U.S. is a superpower willing to use its military might. And Sheinbaum is preparing to negotiate an important trade agreement with the United States. “When she doesn’t stand up, Mexicans still support her because they realize she’s standing up [to Trump] as best as she can,” Starr said.
LeoGrande agrees. “She feels she has to lay low on this,” he said.

But after two CIA agents were killed in a car crash in Chihuahua in April, Sheinbaum was furious to learn they had been working with local police without Mexican authorization to dismantle a methamphetamine lab.
Another flashpoint came when federal prosecutors in New York indicted the sitting governor of Mexico's Sinaloa state, Rubén Rocha Moya, along with nine other current and former Mexican officials, on charges of drug trafficking and conspiring with the Sinaloa Cartel.

The U.S. then asked the Mexican government to arrest Rocha Moya ant the others listed in its 34-page indictment. Sheinbaum responded by saying Mexico would conduct its own investigation of the matter and if crimes were committed, try the perpetrators.

“However, if there is no clear evidence [of a crime], it is obvious that the goal of these charges by the Justice Department is political,” Sheinbaum said at an April 30 press conference. “Let me be absolutely clear: Under no circumstances will we allow a foreign government to interfere or meddle in decisions that belong exclusively to the Mexican people.”

That’s the red line Sheinbaum won’t cross, and for now it’s holding strong.