The President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, mocked the proposal from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the American Gulf, instead suggesting that North America be called Mexican America.
Sheinbaum's comments came on Wednesday following a press conference by Trump, where he discussed renaming the body of water that stretches from Florida to Cancun, called for Canada to become a U.S. state, and did not rule out the use of military force or economic coercion to establish control over Greenland and the Panama Canal.
During her daily press conference, Claudia Sheinbaum stood in front of a 1607 map of the region from the colonial era, which shows part of modern-day United States as being part of Mexico, and proposed renaming North America to Mexican America, as it was referred to in the founding document of 1814 that preceded the adoption of Mexico's constitution.
"Sounds nice, doesn’t it?" she said sarcastically.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump, who will officially take office on January 20, also stated that Mexico "must stop allowing millions of people to come into our country" and that the country is run by drug cartels.
Sheinbaum firmly refuted these claims, stating: "The people govern in Mexico."
Sheinbaum's predecessor and political mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who shares the same populist ideology as Trump but leans left, managed to build a relationship with Donald Trump as an ally, and his government, under pressure from the U.S., began to block the movement of migrants northward.
In light of Trump's promise in November to impose 25% tariffs on Mexican imports, Sheinbaum warned that her administration would respond with similar measures. She stated that any taxes "are unacceptable and will lead to inflation and job losses in both the U.S. and Mexico."
At the same time, during the press conference on Wednesday, Claudia Sheinbaum emphasized her hopes for strong ties between the two countries in the future.
"I believe we will have good relations," she said. "President Trump has his own way of communicating."