Bipartisan Pair of House Members to Meet With Sheinbaum in Mexico
A bipartisan pair of congressmen is set to travel to Mexico next week to meet with President Claudia Sheinbaum and other top government officials as President Trump stokes tension between the United States and its southern neighbor.
Representatives Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, and Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, are planning one of the first formal trips by members of Congress to meet with Ms. Sheinbaum. With Mr. Trump’s tariffs driving up prices and his immigration crackdown affecting the region, Mr. Khanna and Mr. Bacon said they hoped to use their visit to figure out how policymakers in Washington could pursue a more constructive approach.
“This is one of our closest allies — one of the nations that most impacts life here in terms of the economy, in terms of the culture, in terms of immigration,” Mr. Khanna said in an interview ahead of the trip. “And Trump, I think, has really put strains on that relationship with these tariffs.”
Mr. Bacon said he was hoping the trip would help him “understand our neighbors better.”
“I know what we feel about the border,” Mr. Bacon said. “I think it’s going to be fascinating to hear the Mexican leadership perspective on trade, border, cyber, national security.”
Mexico has been at the center of the president’s trade war and his often whipsawing pronouncements about slapping financial penalties on nations that do not bow to his wishes. Mr. Trump has imposed a 25 percent tariff on a wide range of Mexican goods, and just last week threatened to increase the penalty to 30 percent on Aug. 1 if the country failed to stop drug cartels and the flow of fentanyl into the United States.
Mr. Bacon, who represents a swing district that includes Omaha and recently announced he would not seek re-election, is among the few Republicans who has pressed for more congressional oversight of tariff decisions, including those that would apply to Mexico.
The pair, who also serve as their respective parties’ top members of a panel focused on military cyber issues, said they were keenly interested in the cybersecurity priorities of the Mexican government and the growing use of drones in the region.
U.S. officials have increasingly deployed unmanned aircraft into Mexican airspace to monitor cartel activity, a practice that began under the Biden administration and was intensified when Mr. Trump returned to office. At the same time, the United States is warning that drug cartels are using drones to launch attacks against each other and worry that the threat could soon be directed toward American interests.
“Since early August 2024, warring Sinaloa cartel factions have increasingly attacked one another using drone-delivered improvised explosive devices, and it is only a matter of time before Americans or law enforcement are targeted in the border region,” Steven Willoughby, a Department of Homeland Security official, told a Senate panel on Tuesday.
Beyond any single issue, Mr. Khanna said he hoped the visit would help counter Mr. Trump’s combative approach toward Mexico, instead emphasizing the importance of the partnership between the two nations.
Mr. Khanna said a key aim was “showing that there are people in the United States who really care about the relationship and want it to be constructive, as opposed to punitive.”