Mexico's retaliation against Trump may be taking shape

Since his election in November, Trump has largely maintained his hardline policies toward Mexico, with US-Mexico relations ever more strained as a result.

The Mexican government is reportedly weighing economic and trade measures to counter Trump's aggressive posture.

But should President Enrique Peña Nieto decide to strike back through other means, there are a number of avenues he could pursue.

US cooperation with Mexico on security matters has played an important role in Mexico's efforts to fight crime. Plan Merida, enacted in 2008, has provided the Mexican government $2.5 billion in funding, as well as training and equipment like Black Hawk helicopters (Those resources are thought to have facilitated abuses as well).

Mexico, however, has played an essential role in a number of initiatives vital to US interests. This includes not only drug interdiction and pursuit of organized-crime suspects, but intercepting and deporting the significant number of migrants from Central America who cross Mexico heading for the US.

Mexico is unlikely to halt its own fight against drugs and crime, but it could reduce or halt cooperation with the US on these programs.

Vigil stressed that friendships between Mexican and US officials may keep cooperation alive, but slights and insults from Trump may accumulate in the minds of Mexican security personnel until some have little motivation to act on tips or intelligence offered by the US. As Vigil explained:

Amid Trump's looming crackdown on illegal immigration — no matter its origin — Mexican officials have identified the movement of people as an issue on which to counter the US's hardline toward Mexico, specifically on trade.

Since 2014, the Mexican government — at the urging of and with the assistance of the US government — has stepped up its apprehension and deportation of migrants from Central America.

By mid-2015, Mexico was deporting more of those migrants than the US. The 153,295 people from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras that Mexico stopped at its southern border in fiscal year 2016 were the second-most apprehended over the previous nine years.

"Mexico should stop doing the United States' dirty work on our southern border and stopping Central American minors or refugees or people fleeing the violence in Central America from going to the United States," Casteñada, the former foreign minister, told CNN this week.

"If they want to go to the United States, let them go," he said. "We should just let them through."

Though his time in office has been short, Trump's posture toward Mexico has inflamed much of the country.

In a poll of Mexicans conducted in late January by Mexican newspaper El Economista, 81.2% of respondents said they had a "bad" opinion of Trump — just one in 25 Mexicans said they had a good opinion of the US president.

The personal, business, and political ties between the two countries are many, and some people in Mexico are quite worried about the strain on the relationship, but Mexicans — among whom a sense of nationalism endures — may not accept the status quo indefinitely.

"I think that Mexico has been a good-faith partner to the United States up until the present, and Mexico needs the United States, and the United States needs Mexico," Shirk, who directs the Justice in Mexico program at USD, told Business Insider.

"But Mexico is a proud country, and at a certain point we will lose their good faith," Shirk said. "Mexico has to, at some point, I think, look out for itself."