Mexico’s Sheinbaum Turns Soaring Approval Into a Test of Power: Welfare Gains, Security Puzzles

Mexico’s first female president ends year one with about 78 percent approval—higher than Andrés Manuel López Obrador at the same point and among the strongest early tallies for any Mexican leader in two decades.

That headline number explains the mood in Mexico City: voters feel the government in their wallets. The engine is continuity. Sheinbaum kept and expanded the social supports that built Morena’s coalition—pensions for seniors, scholarships and stipends for youths, and targeted aid for low-income families and rural producers.

For millions, those payments arrive every month and make life a little more predictable. That is the story. The story behind the story is a tension between statistics and lived experience.

Official data show homicides down roughly 32 percent nationwide since the administration began, with especially steep falls reported in Guanajuato and Nuevo León. Yet when Mexicans are asked what worries them most, crime and drug trafficking still top the list.

People are not wrong: a national curve can bend even as neighborhoods feel uneven progress. Bridging that gap is year two’s central test.

Sheinbaum Faces Test on Security, Customs, and Trade

Politics adds pressure. The government is pushing a customs crackdown to curb large-scale tax evasion and fuel smuggling—an issue measured in tens of billions of pesos a year.

Success would help fund social programs without new taxes; failure would hand ammunition to critics. Meanwhile, the detention abroad of a former Tabasco police chief on organized-crime allegations, and scrutiny of figures around Morena, keep corruption fears alive.

Two cabinet names matter to watch from abroad. Security secretary Omar García Harfuch is the face of the new policing strategy. Economy secretary Marcelo Ebrard steers the coming review of North America’s trade deal—vital for factories from Monterrey to Michigan.

Why this matters to readers outside Mexico is simple. A popular president with fiscal room and security momentum can stabilize the region’s second-largest economy and a key U.S. trade partner.

Whether Sheinbaum turns early goodwill into durable gains—safer streets, cleaner customs, steady growth—will shape supply chains, migration flows, and politics on both sides of the border.

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