United States President Donald Trump has claimed that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum refused an offer to send US troops to the Latin American country due to her fear of drug cartels.

Trump on Sunday confirmed that he had suggested sending US troops to Mexico to combat drug trafficking, a day after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her country’s sovereignty was “not for sale”.

“If Mexico wanted help with the cartels, we would be honoured to go in and do it. I told her that,” Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One.

“I would be honoured to go in and do it. The cartels are trying to destroy our country.”

Asked if he was disappointed over Sheinbaum’s decision, Trump claimed that she had refused the offer because she is “so afraid of the cartels, she can’t walk”.

“I think she’s a lovely woman. The president of Mexico is a lovely woman, but she is so afraid of the cartels that she can’t even think straight,” Trump said without offering evidence to support his claim.

On Saturday, Sheinbaum told a public event that she had told the US president that Mexico would never accept the presence of US troops on its territory.

“I told him, ‘No, President Trump, our territory is inviolable, our sovereignty is inviolable, our sovereignty is not for sale,’” she said.

Sheinbaum made her comments after The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, reported that the Trump administration was pressuring her government to allow “deeper US military involvement” in the fight against Mexican drug cartels.

Trump has often accused Mexico of not doing enough to halt the flow of fentanyl and other illicit drugs across the US southern border.

In one of the first salvoes of his wide-ranging trade war, Trump announced in February that he would impose across-the-board 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada over what he said was their failure to crack down on the influx of drugs and undocumented migrants.

Trump subsequently announced that he would suspend the tariffs on goods falling under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the three-way free trade deal that his first administration negotiated to succeed the North American Free Trade Agreement.