Did Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum address President Donald Trump in a speech about "7 billion consumers ready to replace" their American products and vacations with non-American ones? No, that's not true: Lead Stories could not find any evidence that Sheinbaum ever said that to Trump, let alone publicly. Neither the website of the Mexican government nor Google News, among other reputable sources, included such a speech.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on February 7, 2025. It opened:
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum addresses Trump:'So, you voted to build a wall.Well, dear Americans, even if you don't understand much about geography, since for you America is your country and not a continent, it is important for you to know, before the first brick is laid, that there are 7 billion people beyond that wall.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Feb 11 15:43:47 2025 UTC)
The post said that 7 billion people were "ready" to replace products like iPhones, vehicles, vacation destinations, food and clothes from American-based companies with non-American ones. The post did not include any evidence that Sheinbaum said this.
Lead Stories searched the website sheinbaumpedia.com, a tool that finds news related to Sheinbaum, for any evidence that would back up the claim. Because the site only allowed us to search 38 characters at a time, we searched short and incomplete phrases: "'So, you voted to build a wall,'" "Sheinbaum addresses Donald Trump," and "There are 7 billion consumers ready." None of these searches yielded a result that could confirm the claim. Evidence of these searches are below:
(Source: Sheinbaumpedia.com screenshot taken on Tue Feb 11 16:03:15 2025 UTC))
(Source: Sheinbaumpedia.com screenshot taken on Tue Feb 11 16:04:35 2025 UTC))
(Source: Sheinbaumpedia.com screenshot taken on Tue Feb 11 16:05:58 2025 UTC))
Lead Stories also searched news releases on the official Mexican government website for the quote, "So, you voted to build a wall. Well, dear Americans, even if you don't understand much about geography, since for you America is your country and not a continent, it is important for you to know, before the first brick is laid, that there are 7 billion people beyond that wall" and did not receive any results (archived here). Evidence of this is below:
(Source: www.gob.mx.com screenshot taken on Tue Feb 11 17:20:45 UTC 2025)
We searched the full quote in Google, which returned only fact checks debunking the claim or other Facebook users posting the same claim. Evidence of this is below:
(Source: Google.com screenshot taken on Tue Feb 11 17:25:50 2025 UTC)
A search (archived here) for keywords and phrases in Google News did not result in any evidence for this claim. The results were articles repeating the claim and unrelated news articles that involved either Sheinbaum or Trump or both.
At the time this was written, Snopes had also reviewed this claim.
We have contacted the Embassy of Mexico and will update this article when a relevant response is received.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims surrounding President Claudia Sheinbaum are here.
More Lead Stories fact checks of claims surrounding President Donald Trump are here.
