Mexico warily...

Mexico warily eyes a President-elect Trump

'Even though Trump is not the prettiest person in the room, we still have to dance with him,' former Mexican President Vicente Fox says after Trump's win.

By Nahal Toosi

The peso crumbled. Now will "the wall" go up?

As the reality of a Donald Trump victory took hold, few places were as startled as Mexico, the country that has repeatedly been insulted by the Republican throughout the bizarre 2016 campaign.

"Beware!" shouted one headline on Excelsior, a prominent Mexican news outlet.

Trump has called Mexicans "rapists," demanded Mexico pay for a border wall, pledged to deport millions of undocumented Mexican immigrants and promised to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement. A brief visit by Trump to Mexico City did little diplomatic repair, especially when, just hours later, he doubled down on his demands.

But here's another reality: The U.S. is Mexico's biggest trading partner and the home of many of its citizens or their relatives. The two countries rely on each other for everything from battling drug cartels to energy production. There's no way for Mexico to fully escape the United States, and thus no escaping soon-to-be President Trump.

"Even though Trump is not the prettiest person in the room, we still have to dance with him," former Mexican President Vicente Fox, one of Trump's fiercest international critics, wrote in a column posted Wednesday. "Now, we ought to look out for ourselves and find a way to work with the most powerful economy in the world, which is now led by an authoritarian racist."

Trump didn't mention the wall, immigration or Mexico specifically during his victory speech early Wednesday morning. He did however, say, "We will get along with all other nations willing to get along with us."

Mexican officials did not immediately respond to POLITICO's requests for comment on Wednesday morning, but they will likely try to stay as diplomatic as possible, even though current Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto at one point compared Trump's rhetoric to that of Adolf Hitler's.

As the election returns came in, global financial markets panicked. The Mexican peso plunged in value, though it was regaining ground by early Wednesday. Investors are likely spooked by Trump's anti-trade stances. The real estate mogul has in particular trashed NAFTA, a pact many Mexicans credit for helping improve their economy.

Mexican officials have said for months that Trump doesn't fully understand how intertwined the two countries' economies are. Some 6 million jobs in the United States depend on trade with Mexico, analysts say.

The net number of Mexicans illegally crossing the border has fallen in recent years. And many of the migrants who do still try to reach the United States without proper authorization are not Mexican. In fact, officials point out, the U.S. relies on Mexico to try to stem such illegal border crossings by people from other parts of Latin America.

After Trump's visit to Mexico City on Aug. 31, Pena Nieto insisted that he'd told him during their private meeting that Mexico was not going to somehow pay for a border wall. But later that same day, during a rally in Arizona, Trump doubled down on all of his harsh anti-immigration stances, including the need for a wall.

(The proposed 2,000-mile barrier is simply impossible for a number of technical reasons, according to experts, but then again, many experts also said Trump couldn't win on Tuesday.)

The notion that Trump will green-light mass deportations sounds horrific to Mexicans, many of whom rely on their relatives earnings in the United States to help keep them afloat and others who view the matter as a potential humanitarian disaster.

Earlier this year, in response to incessant attacks by Trump, the Mexican government embarked on a public relations campaign in the U.S. to try to educate Americans about the Mexico and the people there. Mexico's dozens of consulates have held outreach events, and they have even asked American Jewish groups for guidance.

Some Mexicans hope that once Trump takes office, he will tone down his rhetoric and get a better sense of how much the U.S. and Mexico need each other. But many, like Fox, the former president, also note that Trump's rise has made it clear that Mexico can't always count on the friendship of Washington.

"This is not the end of the world," Fox wrote. "For Mexico it's an opportunity to explore what other nations have to offer. We can create trade agreements with South America, China, India and Europe. But it's the United States who are the real losers with Donald Trump as their leader."