If Washington had not woken up covered in the first snowfall of winter, perhaps it would have been the occasion to resort to the helpful image of the thaw in relations between the president of the United States, Donald Trump, his Mexican counterpart, Claudia Sheinbaum, who was traveling to the American capital for the first time, and the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney. The three North American partners are about to close the most tense year in their relationship since the signing of the free trade agreement, T-MEC, in the 1990s, but this Friday those quarrels—and Trump’s threats and insults—were put aside.
The reason for the unofficial trilateral summit (a group that in a past that now seems distant presented itself as the “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 organizer, usually defends that politics has no place in the tournament, but at this Friday’s event, held at the city’s great temple of music and performing arts, put by Trump at the service of MAGA (Make America Great Again) ideals, it was more present than ever.
And this supposed neutrality of soccer’s governing body did not prevent Gianni Infantino, its president, from entertaining Trump by giving him a peace consolation prize, invented on the fly. They awarded it to him precisely one week before what the president really longs for, the Nobel Prize, which will be awarded in Oslo to the Venezuelan dissident María Corina Machado.
In his acceptance speech, the president of the United States defended that he has ended eight wars, in what can only be defined as an exaggeration, and said: “The World Cup is going to be something incredible. The three countries have worked side by side to coordinate it. And I want to say that our relationship is extraordinary.” Previously, he had told the reporters who follow him daily that he would discuss trade with his partners once the draw was over, although he did not give more details about when and how.
The three leaders then went up to the stage of the Kennedy Center opera house, and stood behind some lecterns with the number 26. “It’s going to be the best deal in history,” said Carney about the collaboration of the countries to organize the World Cup. Sheinbaum, in Spanish, sold an “extraordinary, beautiful, magical” Mexico. “They are an extraordinary, hard-working people who have played the ball game since ancient times,” he added.
Trump recalled for his part that this will not be the first time that soccer tries to take off in the United States: he went back to the times of Pelé in the Cosmos, a defunct New York team, and repeated one of the few arguments he uses about a sport with which he has no past: “We have to find a new name, because you call it soccer, and we, soccer“, he declared, before Infantino took a selfie with the three and they returned to the presidential box of the cultural complex’s opera house.
Threats of tariffs and security demands
The event was obviously surrounded by uncertainty about the pairings that the hype would bring to the 48 classified countries (not the groups into which the host teams will fall; that was decided beforehand), but also by how Trump would behave, who attended accompanied by the first lady, Melania Trump, with his old allies, whom he has been threatening for months with tariffs and scolding for not doing enough to stop the trafficking of fentanyl, a powerful opiate that has caused a sensational crisis of tens of thousands of deaths from overdoses.
In the case of Mexico, in which the US president has flirted with the idea of launching a military offensive to, pulverizing the rules of international law, decapitate drug trafficking, as he has been doing with the extrajudicial murders of the crew members of the alleged drug boats (at least, in 21 attacks; the last one, on Thursday) that ply the international waters of the Caribbean and the Pacific.
Trump’s personal relationship with Sheinbaum has been cordial in recent months. After almost two dozen calls, letters and a string of direct and indirect references between the two, this Friday came the litmus test of face-to-face contact that, clearly, the Mexican president has avoided in this time. And so, there was no bilateral meeting in the Oval Office, in which Sheinbaum was also exposed to another draw, in which he could win one of the two bombs of the White House hype: that of a cordial meeting, despite the previous attacks, such as that of the mayor or that of a trap in the style of that of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who went around the world last February.
A brief meeting was planned, in which both leaders hoped to discuss security and commercial issues; Trump has imposed 25% tariffs on all products that are not covered by the USMCA, as well as 25% tariffs on automobiles, and 50% on steel, aluminum and copper. It was also hoped that Sheinbaum, who has already done so, would offer a third batch of drug shipments from Mexican prisons to those in the United States.
Carney has indeed gone through that Oval Office drink on two occasions. In the first of them, he reminded Trump that “Canada is not for sale,” and he emerged victorious in a hostile climate, supported by the president of the United States before taking office, and by his aspirations to turn the northern neighbor into the 51st State of the Union.
The script flip in relations between the two old allies has awakened a dormant nationalism in Canada, encouraging the boycott of American products and altering 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 Gretsky, a friend of Trump and reviled in recent months by his compatriots for his harmony with the MAGA world after decades of living in the United States, to serve as the face of the country in the draw.
