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MEXICAN PRESIDENT SHEINBAUM’S TRIUMPHANT YEAR ONE  
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Kurt Hackbarth
October 1, 2025
Jacobin
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_ From deftly handling hostile Donald Trump to securing real economic
gains for workers, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum ends her first
year in office with remarkable 80% approval rating. Now the real fight
for Mexico’s economic sovereignty begins _

Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico City, September 1., Photo: Jesica
Ramírez/Presidencia // El Pais

 

On September 15, Claudia Sheinbaum — the first woman president in
Mexico’s history — stepped onto the balcony of the National Palace
to perform the ritual _grito_, or cry of independence.

In keeping with her government’s drive to recognize overlooked
female figures in Mexican history, she included among the familiar
pantheon of independence heroes names such as Josefa Ortiz
Téllez-Girón, who tipped off insurgents that their plan had been
discovered; Leona Vicario, who provided them with both intelligence
and financing; and Manuela Molina, who fought directly in their forces
as _La Capitana_.

At each mention in the list of _vivas_, the packed crowd in the
Zócalo, Mexico City’s central square, roared in approval. For them,
President Sheinbaum’s year in power has been a remarkable success.

Continuity and Innovation

The ceremony capped a heady two weeks in which the Sheinbaum
administration rolled into its one-year anniversary in office with a
full head of steam. On September 1, the _presidenta_ delivered
her first _informe_
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Mexico’s equivalent of the State of the Union address, after which
she hit the road to deliver parallel _informes _in each of the
thirty-two states. There was plenty of good news to report.

According to the most recent statistics, 13.4 million
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were lifted out of poverty during the term of her predecessor, Andrés
Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), while the Gini coefficient, measuring
income inequality, has decreased from 0.426 to 0.391. Her first year
has seen the passage of key laws and constitutional reforms, including
a judicial reform providing for the direct election of the federal
judiciary; recognition of greater autonomy for indigenous and
Afro-Mexican peoples; a “Mexican ERA” for women’s rights;
strengthened public control over the energy sector; statutory approval
for the public provision of internet, over 2,000 miles of train tracks
(including two long-distance lines to the US border), and 1.8 million
housing units; a first-in-the-world app law providing benefits for
rideshare drivers; and a ban on the planting of GMO corn, though the
nation is still forced to import it from the United States following a
loss at a USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement) dispute
settlement panel.

Macroeconomic numbers are solid, despite perennially looming tariff
threats that Sheinbaum has maneuvered Donald Trump into postponing
three separate times. In some areas, she is building on initiatives
begun under AMLO, such as maintaining annual minimum wage raises,
continuing the groundbreaking daily press conferences known as
the _mañaneras_, lowering the public-pension age for women down to
sixty, extending stay-in-school scholarships to all grades, and
establishing public “well-being stores” to sell staple goods
procured from small producers.

In other areas, she is striking out on her own, including an in-home
health outreach program for seniors; development projects for a
satellite, semiconductors, and an electric mini-vehicle; and the
creation of a cabinet-level Department of Women’s Affairs and
Department of Science, Humanities, Technology, and Innovation. All of
this together, crucially, with a 25 percent drop in Mexico’s murder
rate. In this light, it is not surprising that she has maintained a
consistent approval rating at or around 80 percent
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placing her among the highest-ranked leaders in the world.

And where AMLO, with his folksy ways, knack for an anecdote or a
nickname, and an endless ability to wind up self-absorbed elites, was
the great communicator to the Mexican people, Sheinbaum has given the
Fourth Transformation a much-needed international projection. Case in
point, the promotional videos
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State of the Union address that circulated widely on US social media,
allowing substantial sections of the public — including some on the
Left — to discover, after seven years, that something interesting is
indeed happening in Mexico.

El Plan México

But a strong first year alone will not stymie the bullying or
deranged bombing threats
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from the White House and other quarters of the national security
state, nor will it automatically adjust Mexico to the rapidly changing
realities of a multipolar world. To accomplish this, Sheinbaum has
launched the _Plan México_: an industrial-planning and
import-substitution initiative designed to leverage state leadership
in strategic areas such as energy
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foster a Mexican-centered model of sustainable national development.

The idea is to link AMLO’s push for sovereignty and self-sufficiency
with a greater emphasis on science and technology, potentiating
infrastructure such as trains and ports while building out a welfare
state based on constitutionally enshrined social rights rather than
here-today-gone-tomorrow entitlements. The plan also embraces the
urgent issue of market diversification in order to reduce the
nation’s dependence on its northern neighbor (some 80 percent
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Mexican exports continue to go to the United States), as exemplified
by the recent Mexico-Brazil trade summit
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On paper, this looks like exactly what Mexico needs. In practice,
there are causes for concern. Memories are still fresh of the massive
expansion of the maquiladora model in the 1990s, which fed on the
tariff advantages of NAFTA and the tax breaks provided by successive
neoliberal governments to set up a seamy realm of low-wage, assembly
employment in the designated border zones.

Then, in 2016, Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) president
Enrique Peña Nieto attempted to import the Chinese model of special
economic zones (SEZs) into four of the nation’s poorest states; the
project, with its costly focus, again, on tax breaks rather than
actual benefits for the communities hosting them, was such a failure
that AMLO quickly dispensed with them once he came into power.
Instead, he pivoted to what became known as the development poles,
which sought to balance tax incentives with social-development goals
in housing, training, and the bringing of local providers into supply
chains. Results so far have been uneven.

And here is where the _Plan México_ comes in. It is fundamental
that the plan place a genuine emphasis on local development in the
form of knowledge, production, patents, and intellectual property. The
aim is for foreign direct investment (FDI) to be targeted and in
keeping with the overarching goals of industrial policy, anchoring
local industries strategically and ensuring technology transfer that
goes beyond simply employee training. And rather than a “simple”
process of public infrastructure for private behemoths, governmental
intervention needs to facilitate a process of greater local
complexity.

In practice, however, early efforts appear to be too narrowly focused
on FDI for FDI’s sake, allowing foreign multinationals such as Coca
Cola
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simply place the “Made in Mexico” label on their domestic
production and chalking it up as a win. A model, in short, that veers
dangerously close to the failed experiments of the past.

Policy or Pressure?

Then there is the China issue. In the spring, the Sheinbaum government
imposed an initial set of modest tariffs on textiles, apparel,
footwear, and select consumer goods. The rationale was to protect
domestic manufacturing against high-volume, low-priced imports, an
understandable measure in light of Mexico’s difficult experience in
grappling with a similar phenomenon from the United States for
decades.

The second round, announced on September 10, however, was much higher
and more sweeping, hitting over 1,400 products including electronics
and automobiles with tariffs
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up to 50 percent. While the Sheinbaum administration was at pains to
insist that the policy is directed at all countries that do not have a
free-trade agreement with Mexico, it is abundantly clear that China
was the primary target. It would be truly ironic if, with the
purported objective of fostering national development under the _Plan
México_, the tariff policy wound up cutting off Mexican businesses
from Chinese industrial components, manufacturing equipment, and green
technology in the form of solar panels and electric vehicles, yoking
it even closer to the United States precisely at a moment when, under
Trump, the country is lurching full-speed backward in terms of the
energy transition.

The question has to be raised: How much of the decision arose out of
legitimate industrial-policy concerns and how much was an attempt to
placate anti-China bullying coming from the United States? If the
latter, Mexico has to know by now that the United States will never be
satisfied with any concessions but will always come back for more. And
as consultations
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the USMCA get underway in the run-up to the 2026 review-and-adjustment
period, Mexico would be well advised to have this realization front
and center more than ever.

Back to the Zócalo

On October 5, the Zócalo will once again fill with people
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celebration of President Sheinbaum’s one-year anniversary in office.
There is much to celebrate. In dark historic times, Mexico is not only
making impressive strides in combining development, rights, and social
welfare, but it is also showing that such a project can be electorally
popular, even dominant.

In so doing, it is acting as a beacon against the encroachment of an
international neofascism that, through showy displays of aggression
and violence, attempts to portray itself as inexorable. In Sheinbaum,
moreover, Mexico has an able leader in both the political and
technical spheres, heading a movement that remains motivated and
mobilized.

The challenge, now, will be to take the necessary steps toward a
genuine economic sovereignty that matches the rhetorical
pronouncements. And that may require a still more difficult layer of
decisions that cannot be postponed much longer.

_[KURT HACKBARTH is a writer, playwright, freelance journalist, and
the cofounder of the independent media project “MexElects.” He is
currently coauthoring a book on the 2018 Mexican election.]_

_Jacobin‘s fall issue, “Borders,” is out now. Follow this link
to get a discounted subscription to our beautiful print quarterly.
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* Mexico
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* Claudia Sheinbaum
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* Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo
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* AMLO
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* Andrés Manuel López Obrador
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* Tariffs
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* Trade Tariffs
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* Economic Policy
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* foreign policy
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* Politics
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* policy
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* Donald Trump
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* U.S.-Mexico relations
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