If Washington had not woken up covered in the first snow of the winter, the occasion might have been appropriate to resort to the useful image of the thaw in relations between the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and his Mexican counterpart, Claudia Sheinbaum, who is traveling to the American capital for the first time, and the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney. The three North American partners are about to end the most tense year in their relationship since the signing of a free trade agreement, T-MEC, in the 1990s, but on Friday those differences – and Trump’s threats and insults – were temporarily put aside in the name of football.
The reason behind the informal tripartite summit (the now seemingly distant group in retrospect presented itself as “the summit”).three Friends”) was the draw for the World Cup, which will be held next year in stadiums spread across 16 cities in the three countries.
FIFA, its organiser, usually advocates that politics have no place in the tournament, but at the event on Friday at Washington’s Kennedy Center, the city’s great temple of music and performing arts, which Trump has placed at the service of MAGA (Make America Great Again) ideals, politics were more present than ever.
This supposed impartiality of FIFA did not prevent Gianni Infantino, the federation’s president, from entertaining Trump by offering him a hastily contrived peace prize. They awarded it to him exactly one week before the date that the president really yearns for: the Nobel Prize, which will be awarded in Oslo to Venezuelan oppositionist Maria Corina Machado.
In his acceptance speech, the US President defended, in what can only be described as hyperbole, that he had ended eight wars. “The World Cup is going to be something incredible,” he said. “The three countries have worked side by side to coordinate it. And I want to say that our relationship is extraordinary.” Earlier, he had told reporters following him daily that he would discuss the trade with his partners once the draw is over, although he did not provide further details on when and how.
The three leaders then took to the Kennedy Center Opera House stage and stood behind some podiums holding the number 26. “This will be the best deal in history,” Carney said of countries cooperating to organize the World Cup. Sheinbaum, in Spanish, described Mexico as “exceptional, beautiful and enchanting.” “They are exceptional, hard-working people who have been playing the game of football since ancient times,” he added.
Trump, for his part, noted that this wouldn’t be the first time soccer has tried to take off in the United States: He went back to Pelé’s time at the Cosmos, the defunct New York team, and repeated one of the few arguments he uses about a sport with which he has no past: “We’ve got to find a new name, because you call it soccer, and we, soccerHe announced this, before Infantino took a selfie with the three and returned to the presidential box in the Opera House of the Cultural Complex.
Tariff threats and security demands
The event was clearly shrouded in uncertainty about what pairings the 48 ranked countries would bring (not which groups the home teams would fall into; that had been decided in advance), but also about how Trump, who attended with First Lady Melania Trump, would fare with his longtime allies, whom he has been threatening for months with tariffs and reprimands for not doing enough to stop the smuggling of fentanyl, a powerful opioid that has sparked a dramatic crisis that has led to tens of thousands of deaths. From overdoses.
In the case of Mexico, these threats have escalated in recent weeks, as the US President has floated the idea of launching a military attack to crush the rules of international law and decapitate drug trafficking, as he has been doing with the extrajudicial killings of alleged crew members on drug boats (at least in 21 attacks, most recently on Thursday) plying international waters of the Caribbean and Pacific.
Trump’s personal relationship with Sheinbaum has been cordial in recent months. After nearly two dozen calls, messages and a series of direct and indirect gestures between the two, Friday came the real test of face-to-face contact, which the Mexican president had clearly avoided at this time. Thus, there was no bilateral meeting in the Oval Office, as Sheinbaum was also exposed to another draw, in which one of the two hype bombs in the White House could go out: a friendly meeting, despite previous attacks, such as the trap of the elected mayor of New York, Zahran Mamdani, or a trap similar to the trap of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, that toured the world last February.
A short meeting has been planned in which the two leaders hope to discuss security and trade issues. Trump imposed tariffs of 25% on all products not covered by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, as well as tariffs of 25% on cars, and 50% on steel, aluminum and copper. It is also hoped that Sheinbaum, who has already extradited more than 50 organized crime bosses to Washington in two batches, will deliver a third batch of drug traffickers’ shipments from Mexican prisons to those in the United States.
Carney has already consumed the Oval Office drink on two occasions. In the first of them, Trump reminded that “Canada is not for sale,” and he emerged victorious in a hostile atmosphere, with the support of the President of the United States before he took office, and with his aspirations to turn the northern neighbor into the 51st state of the Union.
The flip-flopping scenario in relations between the two old allies has awakened dormant nationalist sentiments in Canada, encouraging a boycott of American products and changing the plans of many of its citizens to cross the border to vacation or do business. Hence the surprise of the election of hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, a friend of Trump who has been criticized in recent months by his compatriots for his alignment with the MAGA world after decades of living in the United States, to serve as the face of the country in the lottery.