Mexico, U.S. discuss water deliveries after Trump tariff threat

President Donald Trump says he will put an additional tariff on Mexico if it doesn’t send over water it owes the United States under a treaty signed in 1944.

Trump said on social media that if Mexico doesn’t deliver 200,000 acre feet of water by the end of the year, his government will implement a 5% tariff on the country. That’s just around a quarter of what Mexico still owes under the treaty.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters at a press conference that Mexican and U.S. officials would meet Tuesday to discuss the water deliveries. Her administration has long said that years of drought have made it impossible for their country to fulfill its water obligation to the United States under the timeline laid out in the 1944 treaty.

“We are of course trying to come to an agreement that allows us to distribute the water we have right now fairly,” Mexico’s subsecretary for North America Roberto Velasco said.

Rosario Sanchez, a Texas A&M researcher who studies water sharing between Mexico and the United States, says while Trump’s tariff threat puts pressure on Mexico, “it won’t bring more water to the system.”

Last month, Texas’ Republicans introduced a bill to Congress that would allow the president to retaliate against Mexico for missed water deliveries, including by allowing the US to deny certain water requests from Mexico.

Texas farmers have long called for Mexico to become more regular with those deliveries, which some rely on for irrigation.