In message to Trump, Mexico’s president displays old map of ‘Mexican America’
Mexico City: Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has responded sarcastically to US President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
Standing before a global map in her daily press briefing, Sheinbaum proposed that North America be renamed “América Mexicana” or “Mexican America” because a founding document dating from 1814 that preceded Mexico’s constitution referred to it that way.
Claudia Sheinbaum gesturing at a map at a point where it shows the words “America Mexicana”.Credit: X
“That sounds nice, no?” she added with a sarcastic tone. She also noted that the Gulf of Mexico had been named that way since 1607.
Canada’s finance minister, meanwhile, warned on Wednesday that Trump’s comments saying Canada should become the 51st state are no longer a joke and are meant to undermine America’s closest ally.
Dominic LeBlanc, the country’s point person for US-Canada relations, said Trump was smiling when he first made the comment during a dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in late November.
‘It’s a way for him, I think, to sow confusion, to agitate people, to create chaos knowing this will never happen.’
Dominic LeBlanc, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs ”
“The joke is over,” said LeBlanc, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. “It’s a way for him, I think, to sow confusion, to agitate people, to create chaos knowing this will never happen.”
Trump keeps floating the idea that Canada should join the United States as the 51st state, saying on Tuesday he would not use military force to invade the country, which is home to more than 40 million people and is a founding NATO partner.
Instead, Trump said he would rely on “economic force” as he erroneously cast the US trade deficit with Canada – a natural resource-rich nation that provides the US with commodities like oil – as a subsidy.
