US President-elect Donald Trump's proposal to call the Gulf of Mexico the 'Gulf of America' was dryly countered by Mexican leader Claudia Sheinbaum.
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Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has mocked US President-elect Donald Trump's proposal to rename the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America" by suggesting that North America should be called "Mexican America".
Sheinbaum's comments on Wednesday came after Trump gave a press conference in which he discussed renaming the body of water which stretches from Florida to Cancun, called for Canada to become a US state, and refused to rule out the use of military force or economic coercion to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal.
In her daily press conference, Sheinbaum stood before a colonial-era map of the region from 1607 and proposed dryly that North America should be renamed "América Mexicana" or “Mexican America", because a founding document dating from 1814 that preceded Mexico's constitution referred to it in that manner.
"That sounds nice, no?" she said sarcastically.
Trump, who will take office for a second term on 20 January, also said on Tuesday that Mexico "has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country" and that the country was run by drug cartels.
Sheinbaum denied that strongly, saying: "In Mexico, the people rule."
The exchange reflects the robust approach adopted by Sheinbaum, who took power in October, towards Trump following his threats of mass deportations and crippling taxes on Mexico.
Sheinbaum's predecessor and political mentor Andrés Manuel López Obrador — who hailed from a similar strain of class populism as Trump, even though he leaned left — was able to build a relationship with Trump as an ally, and his government began to block migrants from going north under US pressure.
On Trump's vow in November to slap 25% tariffs on Mexican imports, Sheinbaum has warned that if the new US administration imposed tariffs on Mexico, her administration would respond with similar measures. She said any sort of tax was "not acceptable and would cause inflation and job losses for the US and Mexico".
However, since those comments, the pair have spoken over the phone and have avoided insulting one another in public. At her press conference on Wednesday, Sheinbaum emphasised that she expected the two nations to have strong ties going forward.
"I think there will be a good relationship," she said. "President Trump has his way of communicating."