‘That sounds nice’: Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum suggests US should be called ‘Mexican America’ in clear message to Donald Trump

Just one day after Donald Trump announced plans to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the country’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has outlined some naming suggestions of her own.

For context, the president-elect this week said in a rambling press conference at Mar-a-Lago that he has plans to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the ‘Gulf of America’, because it has “a nice ring to it.” Following up on the proposal, Trump loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene then said she had instructed her staff to “immediately draft legislation” to initiate the name-change, which seems to form part of Trump’s broader imperialist vision which has also come to include Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal. 

Hitting back at the proposal, however, Sheinbaum suggested a name-change of her own, this time directed at America. Standing in front of a global map, the Mexican president proposed that North America be renamed “América Mexicana” — or “Mexican America” — because of a founding document from 1814 that once referred to it that way. Per Sydney Morning Herald, Sheinbaum sarcastically added that her suggestion “sounds nice, no?”, before reiterating that the body of water had been called the Gulf of Mexico since 1607.

Schooling Trump with masterful precision, Sheinbaum’s makeshift geography lesson also noted that a chunk of US territory, including California and Texas, was once a part of the Spanish empire and later independent Mexico — until it ceded the land to Washington in the 19th century. By Trump’s own logic of supposed reclamation, that would indeed warrant a name-change to Mexican America which, in Trump’s words, also has a “nice ring to it.” 

While Trump could theoretically be successful in his efforts, AP News reports that other countries will not be bound by his Gulf of America name-change, since there are instances where countries refer to the same body of water or landmark by different names. In other words, it’s a pursuit that feels just as inconsequential as Trump’s similar rhetoric around annexing Canada as a 51st state. After repeatedly calling him a “governor” and floating the idea of subsuming Canada, prime minister Justin Trudeau took the reins from Sheinbaum with a response of his own. 

“There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,” the outgoing prime minister wrote, adding that “both our countries benefit from being each other’s biggest trading and security partner.” Sheinbaum and Trudeau aren’t the only leaders who’ve reacted to Trump’s fanciful plans for world domination. After suggesting that Greenland be annexed for “national security purposes” — and not ruling out the possibility of doing so through military force — the territory’s Prime Minister, Mute Egede, declared that “we are not for sale and will never be for sale.” 

Then came the Panama Canal, another object of Trump’s imperialism which he said is “is vital to our country.” Unsurprisingly, this was also met with opposition from Panama’s Foreign Minister Javier Martínez-Acha, who said that its sovereignty over the canal is “non-negotiable” and that their current ownership is “how it is going to stay.” That’s political-speak for “get your greasy fingers off my canal!”. Who knows, maybe with a few more geography lessons from Sheinbaum, Trump will get confused by the entire ordeal and go back to the simpler days of eating cats and dogs.