Mexico's president hits back at Trump over 'Gulf of America': 'We're going to call it Mexican America'
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum dove into President-elect Trump’s chatter of geopolitical rearrangement Wednesday, proposing a name change for North America in response to Trump’s musings about the Gulf of Mexico.
In a wide-ranging press conference Tuesday, Trump expounded on his aspirations of U.S. territorial expansion to Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, and proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”
Sheinbaum, in her daily morning press conference Wednesday, said the body of water shared by Cuba, Mexico and the United States is internationally recognized as the Gulf of Mexico, adding that North America was historically marked on maps as Mexican America.
“I mean obviously ‘Gulf of Mexico,’ the name is recognized by the United Nations, an organism of the United Nations. But next, why don’t we call it ‘Mexican America’? It sounds nice, doesn’t it?” Sheinbaum said, waving to a historical map projected on a screen.
“Since 1607,” Sheinbaum added, in an apparent reference to the map. “the Constitution of Apatzingán was for Mexican America, so we’re going to call it ‘Mexican America,’ it sounds nice, doesn’t it? And Gulf of Mexico, well, since 1607 and it’s also recognized internationally.”
Sheinbaum’s constitutional reference pointed to the country’s first proposed founding document after declaring independence from Spain in 1810 — a constitution that was never in effect and mandated, among other things, Catholicism as the official state religion.
The Apatzingán Constitution of 1814 did refer to the budding country’s territory as “América mexicana” pending an “exact demarcation” of the territory that would eventually become Mexico.
And numerous historical maps during the colonial era referred to North America as either “Mexican America,” “Mexicana,” “Septentrional America” or a combination.
One 1544 map designated North America as “Baccalearum” in reference to the abundance of cod along its shores.
Sheinbaum’s tit-for-tat rhetorical spars with Trump echo her predecessor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who maintained a cordial relationship with Trump while saber-rattling against the United States for the benefit of his domestic audience.
López Obrador, Sheinbaum’s political mentor, designated her as his successor ahead of the 2024 election, which she won by a landslide.
In the run-up to his second inauguration, Trump has made a series of controversial statements that seem to fly in the face of international agreements on the permanence of borders.
On Tuesday, he called the U.S.-Canada border an “artificially drawn line” in making the argument that the two countries, which in 2024 traded $700 billion in goods, according to the Census Bureau, would be better off as a single market.
Trump’s political rise and permanence has largely been built on his portrayal of the U.S.-Mexico border as an immovable, essential barrier. According to the Census Bureau, the United States and Mexico exchanged about $777 billion in goods across that border in 2024.
Trump also alleged Tuesday that Mexico is “essentially run by the cartels,” a claim Sheinbaum countered by taking a swipe at former President Felipe Calderón, López Obrador’s arch-nemesis who ran the country from 2006-12.
"I think they told President Trump wrong — they told him Felipe Calderón is still president,” Sheinbaum quipped.