Mexico City, Mexico - Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday that import tariffs proposed by President-elect Donald Trump will do nothing to stop US-bound migration or drug trafficking in a defiant letter.

"President Trump, it is not with threats or tariffs that the migration phenomenon will be stopped, nor the consumption of drugs in the United States," she told reporters, reading a letter she will send to Trump in which she proposes dialogue.

Trump said Monday he would impose a 25% tariff on all imports from Mexico and Canada as one of his first actions upon becoming president in January.

"This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!" Trump wrote in a racist post on his Truth Social page, without mentioning the trilateral free trade agreement both countries share with the US.

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Sheinbaum said "cooperation and mutual understanding" are required to address such issues, and a tariff war would only put "common enterprises at risk."

She pointed to carmakers such as General Motors and Ford operating in Mexico.

"Why put a tax on them that puts them at risk? It is not acceptable and would cause inflation and job losses in the United States and Mexico," the president said.

The US, Mexico, and Canada are tied to a three-decade-old free trade agreement, now called the USMCA, that was renegotiated under Trump after he complained that US businesses, especially automakers, were losing out.

Trump has vowed to declare a national emergency and use the US military to carry out a mass deportation of migrants.

Sheinbaum in her letter rejected the incoming US president's rhetoric around undocumented migration and fentanyl trafficking, writing, "You must also be aware of the illegal trafficking of firearms into my country from the United States."

"Seventy percent of the illegal weapons seized from criminals in Mexico come from your country," the Mexican president continued. "We do not produce these weapons, nor do we consume synthetic drugs. Tragically, it is in our country that lives are lost to the violence resulting from meeting the drug demand in yours."

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"If even a small percentage of what the United States allocates to war were instead dedicated to building peace and fostering development, it would address the underlying causes of human mobility."

The US has a long history of intervention and destabilization in Latin American countries, which on top of the war on drugs, harmful sanctions, and continued environmental destruction is driving people to leave their homes.