Luis Rubio

Biden is a rare specimen in the world of politics. Despite his chronological years and his (historical) discursive dyslexia, he has proven to be masterful in legislative matters and, although not recognized for it, he has advanced an agenda in a much more successful manner than would have seemed possible within a context of enormous polarization. The tangible fact is that Biden has altered the economic policy as well as the foreign policy of his country. The verdict regarding the goodness of these changes has yet to be discerned, but whatever it may be, Mexico will see itself impacted.

Beyond personalities, Biden shares a characteristic with Reagan, his predecessor in the eighties. Reagan was a great actor, an extraordinarily talented orator, but without the least pretense of being a profound intellectual, as was Adlai Stevenson (twice a presidential candidate in the fifties) or Barack Obama. Nor does Biden entertain the least intellectual aspiration, he stands, as Reagan did, for a set of very clear and simple principles that orient their decisions and their manner of acting. Of course, Biden’s principles are radically distinct from those of Reagan, given that he has not only broken with the notion of the United States as the main promoter of the world economy, but instead advocated for promoting an introspective industrial policy and protecting unionized workers.

Bidenomics, as his economic strategy has come to be known, is nothing other than a coarse way of promoting, through massive subsidies, the installation of manufacturing plants for high-technology goods, especially sophisticated processors, and sustainable energy, as part of his strategy of competing with China. This economic thrust complements the aggressive foreign policy of confrontation with China that Trump, his immediate predecessor, had launched, but now financed with huge fiscal subsidies. That is, the government (or, well, the taxpayers) subsidizes great enterprises to stop the fabrication of technological goods in China, Taiwan, and other latitudes.

In the 2022 mid-term elections Biden’s party lost control of the House of Representatives, whose new majority has been experiencing one convulsion after another in attempting to elect a leadership that ties in with the Trump cult that has come to dominate the Republicans. Despite that obstacle, Biden has achieved, at least to date, avoiding Congress declaring the bankruptcy of the U.S. government on not authorizing the debt limits required. But what is relevant is that, despite the obstacles and the uncertainty of his policies in economic as well as foreign matters, Biden has been able to advance once and again.

In addition to inflation the electorate does not pardon his age. Biden is an octogenarian who, on winning the next election would end his mandate at the age of 86 years. Although Trump is only three years younger, the difference between them in the capacity for communication is without doubt noticeable. This circumstance has led numerous observers and potentials contenders within his own Democratic circuit to call for him to renounce re-election in favor of another, younger alternative.

Biden is an enigma in the electoral sense. Those of us who have observed him over the decades know that his discursive capacity is extraordinarily limited and infinite in his propensity for committing gaffes. In the eighties, as pre-candidate, he was caught plagiarizing a speech, which excluded him from the contest at that moment. Forty years later he surprised half the world on defeating Trump, who will probably again be the contender for the November election.

For Mexico, the U.S. is not only its principal export market but also its principal growth engine through those same exports. Its future depends on the capacity to tighten those links, while expanding and generalizing these throughout the entire national territory, in that the revenue that the exports generate translate into incomes for increasingly more Mexicans. The problem is that this logic is not linear: in his eagerness to safeguard companies with unionized workers, Biden threatens to exclude diverse Mexican products, especially in the automotive realm, from the terms of the commercial treaty that regulates the bilateral economic relationship.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for Mexico lies in that AMLO, the current President, has objectives that are not in sync with the best economic interest of his own country.  In contrast with Biden, who (successfully) has been able to skirt the vast sources of confrontation within the U.S. society for advancing his agenda, AMLO sees no reason to even attempt to be the president of all Mexicans: better to polarize and confront than to advance the development of the country.

Mexico, as a middle-power nation, but with an outstandingly long border and an exceedingly wealthy neighbor, whosoever it is governing it, has the option of deciding to take advantage of the opportunity that this constitutes or pretend that its future would be more successful by joining the losers of the South of the continent. As at other crucial moments of Mexico’s history, the dilemma is real; the question is whether whoever governs Mexico from next October on will understand the magnitude of the challenge.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

At its thirtieth anniversary, the North American Free Trade Agreement (and its second iteration in the form of the USMCA) has been the most successful instrument of economic transformation that Mexico has ever had in its life as an independent nation. It sounds easy, but in recent decades it has been possible to provide stability to the economy and the exchange rate, two factors that for centuries seemed unattainable. Although there are many complaints and criticisms regarding this agreement, the best way to assess it would be to imagine what would have happened to Mexico in the absence of this instrument.

Three objectives motivated the negotiation of what ended up being NAFTA. The first two were economic in nature and the third was political. The aim was to promote active engagement in international trade with the aim of modernizing the Mexican economy and generating a source of foreign currency that would allow paying for imports carried out on a regular basis. Secondly, it sought to promote foreign investment in order to raise the growth rate of the economy, as a means of creating new sources of wealth and employment and, in this way, reducing poverty.

The numbers show that the success in both areas has been dramatic: Mexico has become a manufacturing export power, and these exports finance the growth of the economy as a whole. That is, exports are the main engine of growth of the Mexican economy and constitute a reliable source of foreign currency, which is an important part of the explanation why the peso-dollar exchange rate has remained stable in recent years (the other factor is remittances). For its part, foreign investment has grown year after year, even in an environment as hostile to it as the one promoted by the current administration. A more favorable environment, particularly in the context of so-called “nearshoring” could raise these rates in an extraordinary way (and, with it, the sources of employment and wealth creation).

The third objective was political in nature: it sought to depoliticize government decision-making related to private investment. The NAFTA constituted a straitjacket for the government, since it committed it to a series of disciplines and limited its capacity for arbitrary decisions as well as those motivated by sheer tantrum. By signing the agreement, the Mexican government committed to preserving a regulatory framework favorable to investment and foreign trade, protecting private investment and preserving a benign environment for economic development. These purposes arose after the expropriation of the banks in 1982, a situation that had created an environment of extreme distrust among both national and foreign investors, without whose activity the country would have no possibility of fostering economic growth, employment, as well as addressing poverty in a systematic way. In this context, the NAFTA made it possible to depoliticize decisions regarding private investment, an objective that continues to work even with an administration that would clearly prefer that the NAFTA not exist, but from which it has benefited immensely. In fact, the NAFTA was designed precisely for a government like the current one.

For 24 years, with very different governments, each with its own, contrasting, priorities, the NAFTA was preserved, and its fundamental principles were respected. From this perspective, NAFTA fully achieved its goal, as even many of its staunchest critics at the beginning recognize today.

Criticism of the treaty originates from elements that have nothing to do with the agreement, essentially that it did not achieve the comprehensive development of the country. The inevitable answer is more than obvious: NAFTA is nothing more than an instrument for the achievement of specific objectives, all of which were achieved. What was not achieved has to do with everything that was not done so that the country could effectively develop, poverty would disappear, and inequality would decrease, and that -all of it- has to do with the absence of a development policy that would have implied the consolidation of the rule of law, the creation of a modern public security system and the concomitant strategies in education, health and the like.

NAFTA is a central instrument for the country’s development. It allowed business decisions to be depoliticized, contributing to the development of highly competitive and world-class companies and industries. Although it is still far from benefiting all Mexicans, its success is so overwhelming that its limitations end up being inconsequential in relative terms. But NAFTA is not, nor can it be, an objective in itself. The country requires a development strategy that assumes it as one of its pillars, but that goes further: to governance, to education, to infrastructure, to security, to the comprehensive competitiveness of the economy and the population. In short, to increase the general productivity of the economy, because only in this way will development be achieved. In the absence of a strategy of this nature Mexico will end up being a country perpetually dependent on low wages. Sad corollary for an institution as visionary and successful as NAFTA has proven to be.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

 • WORLDCRUNCH – ENGLISH EDITION

LOPEZ-OBRADOR
As Mexico´s president seeks to consolidate his power ahead of the 2024 general elections in the fall, will voters and institutions react to safeguard the country´s democracy or fall deeper into outgoing President López Obrador´s authoritarian impulses?

MEXICO CITY — Two philosophies divide the realm of power. One seeks to ensure the state has all the tools it needs to bring about equality, and the other pursues the state’s decentralization and expand civil liberties. The first philosophy, rooted in the ideas of the 18th century French thinker Rousseau, is cherished by governments keen to take charge of their citizens. Such governments will always tout the leader or head of state as the people’s only representative.

Though, inevitably, such regimes incline toward tyranny. The second philosophy, rooted in the writings of the Englishman John Locke, favors a balance of power inside the state, precisely to prevent the tyranny of any one person or party. Another 18th century thinker, Montesquieu, described the state as a structure made of three branches of government (judicial, legislative and executive), with each acting as a check on the power of the other two.

In the last century, the philosophy of government has evolved here in Mexico. An initial, formative period (1916-17) that followed the tumult of the 1910 revolution, saw jostling between liberal, conservative, authoritarian, even trade-unionist and anarchist ideas until a constitutional agreement was reached and a charter approved in 1917.

Much of it was based on the liberal constitution of 1857. Subsequent decades saw a consolidation of this centralising vision, associated especially with the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas, which shaped Mexican governance through a period of economic development. This system began to falter with the 1968 student riots, and then the 1985 Mexico City earthquake.

These events would fuel electoral rivalries throughout the 1980s, as well as a number of economic and political reforms that would lay the groundwork for a more open economy and a political system that aspired to be fully democratic.

Most importantly, the economic and especially political changes of recent decades did not emerge from a Left-Right division. Students were the first group to demand democratization and limits to presidential powers, later being backed, for a while at least, by the center-right National Action Party (PAN), which had itself emerged as a reaction to the corruption of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party).

A new reality
Such changes have entailed an extraordinary, philosophical revolution, which has
inevitably prompted its own counterrevolution seen in the current president, Andrés
Manuel López Obrador (often simply called by his initials AMLO). Since its election in
2018, the current administration has not only worked to consolidate its power but also
eliminate any counterweight or outpost of resistance.

Many institutions have been eradicated, starved of funds or neutralized (by leaving
vacancies in bodies like the market regulator or the Electoral Court, well, vacant). This
all illustrates an easily discernible pattern. The president says parallel bodies are
"onerous" to the public purse and are being removed to save people money. Yet this
downsizing has more to do with his vision of power – call it a blast from the past – that
excludes citizens and gives preference to total presidential control.

Power, unfortunately, corrupts.

In the Soviet Union — another top-down system — they'd say it was easy to
differentiate between authoritarian and democratic systems. In the former, politicians
mocked citizens and in democracies the opposite occurred. But political systems
where one person says and does as they please and mock, or pummel, those who
oppose their vision are all too common. Power, unfortunately, corrupts.
Looking ahead, two fundamental questions hang over the president's institutional plans.
Firstly: how will candidates (for the 2024 general elections) react to his proposals? The
answer to this question will reveal these candidates' inclinations to side either with their
citizens or with tyranny? The second concerns parliament: will it fulfill its responsibilities,
or continue to submit to the president as nothing more than a rubber stamp?

Hope for a new future

In 1997, when the PRI first lost its absolute majority in parliament, the opposition
celebrated the hope of a new future in Mexico.”Together we outnumber you,” one
opponent told the country´s PRI president Ernesto Zedillo. From 1997 to 2012,
parliament was not so much a counterweight as an impregnable wall of opposition.
That changed with Enrique Peña Nieto and the return of some old-style politics with a
bit of help from cash bribes! As for this parliament, it has been Soviet-style in its
submission and loyalty!
We´ve seen a lot of mediocrity and lackluster performances.
But our country has a big opportunity in September and October 2024, with the
formation of a new parliament and a new government. We´ve had a range of
experiences in recent decades, both in leadership and legislative terms, with a lot of
mediocrity and lackluster performances.
People have a chance to vote in a system of checks and balances that constitutes
collective governance. This means a new framework of full legitimacy consisting of
three branches of government. Put simply, it is the chance to end our decline towards
authoritarianism and begin a new stage of development.

https://worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/mexico-2024-elections

 Luis Rubio

 Luis Rubio

Two philosophies of power divide the world: one seeks its concentration to guarantee that the State has full powers to advance equality, while the other seeks its decentralization to ensure the freedom of citizens. The first, originally articulated by Rousseau, is the favorite of governments that aim to put themselves above the citizenry. Hence the notion that the head of the government is the sole representative of the people. Inevitably, these governments tend to become tyrannical. The second philosophy, articulated by John Locke, aims at building counterweights to power to ensure that the consecration of a tyrannical government is impossible. Montesquieu formalized this philosophy with his approach to a structure of divided government (executive, legislative and judicial), with a system of limits where each branch balances the others. Clearly, these are explicitly contradictory views.

In the last hundred years, Mexico has seen its governing philosophy evolve. In the constituent period, diverse currents -liberal, conservative, authoritarian, unionist, democratic, anarchist and everything else- coexisted, until an agreement was reached in the form of the constitutional document that ended up being adopted in 1917, much of whose content was derived from the liberal constitution of 1857. In the following decades, the centralizing vision that characterized the Cardenista era took shape and was strengthened as the country advanced in its economic development. The student movement of 1968 and then the 1985 earthquake shook the political system, giving rise to the politico-electoral disputes of the eighties and, from there on, to the series of both economic and political reforms that laid the foundations for an open economy and a political system that aspires to be fully democratic.

It is important to note that the political-economic changes of recent decades, especially the political ones, did not emerge from a left-right axis. In the political sphere in particular, the calls for democracy and the demand to limit presidential power originated in the student movement and was supported -in time- by the PAN, whose very origin was a reaction to the consolidation of the PRI system.

The philosophical evolution has been extraordinary, and it would have been naive to assume that a counterrevolution like the one championed by the President would not occur. Since its inauguration in 2018, the current government has been committed not only to concentrating power, but also to eliminating any loopholes that would prevent or limit the exercise of power. The elimination of institutions, the financial starvation of some of these and the de facto neutralization of others (especially by not appointing replacements when their members’ terms expired, as in the INAI, the COFECE and now the Electoral Tribunal) are all examples of a pattern which is easy to discern. The presidential bill to formalize the elimination of these and other autonomous bodies, which the President justifies in terms of cost (they are “onerous,” he said), in reality is the product of a vision of power that excludes the citizenry and privileges the unrestricted exercise of power by the President.

In the Soviet era, many of whose jokes were like Mexico’s, it was said that the difference between an authoritarian government and a democratic one was very simple: in an authoritarian system politicians make fun of citizens, while in a democratic system It happens exactly the other way around. It is not difficult to understand the preference for an authoritarian system in which a person -in this case the President- systematically dedicates himself to excluding, disqualifying, ignoring and attacking all those who do not align with his vision of power and life.

Looking ahead there are two factors that are important. The first is how the two candidates will react to the presidential proposal, revealing their preferences and propensities. Will they align themselves with the citizenry or with tyranny? The second is regarding Congress: will it exercise its responsibility, or will it continue to accept being railroaded by the executive, as if it were a mere appendage?

In 1997, when the PRI lost its absolute majority in the Congress for the first time, the opposition boasted about the new reality (“together we are more than you,” Porfirio Muñoz Ledo snapped at then-President Zedillo), but dedicated itself to opposing each and any initiative that came from the executive. Instead of a counterweight, the Mexican Congress between 1997 and 2012 was an almost irreducible wall of opposition. The Congress of Peña’s presidency succumbed to direct cash payments that bought the votes. The current Congress has been submissive to a fault.

The big opportunity begins next September and October, respectively. Then Mexico will have a new Congress and a new government. After mixed experiences of alternation of political parties in government, various styles of Presidents in power and a pathetic performance overall, the opportunity to build an effective system of counterweights dedicated to co-governing will be unique: to build a new scaffolding of governance that enjoys full legitimacy, supported by the three branches of government, all committed to asserting their functions and responsibilities. In other words, to get out of the morass in which Mexicans find themselves to enter a new stage of development.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

                                      Luis Rubio

The world is living through an era of animosity and Mexico is not the exception. The presidential strategy of dividing and polarizing has been utilized by leaders around the world during these convulsive times, as illustrated by Trump, Narendra Modi in India, Bolsonaro in Brazil and Orban in Hungary. Some leaders have been subtler in their ways, less strident, but equally divisive in their strategies, as was Obama. The point is that, during the last decade, polarization has become an instrument for conducting politics. Everything in the Mexican public space -the Presidency, the Congress, the Supreme Court and the electoral processes- acquired calamitous dimensions as if in each vote, decision or sentence the future of the country was at stake.  The question that seems pertinent to me is whether, considering the upcoming electoral contest, the country can return to a schema of unity, which is not the same as unanimity.

The point of departure is that Mexico is not a homogeneous nor an egalitarian country where social, economic, political or economic differences are any the lesser. In fact, the opposite has happened: Mexican society has evolved in the direction of a growing diversity that, of course, is not new, because a mosaic has long characterized Mexicans, with the ensuing differences, divisions and conflicting perspectives. If one observes the world, it is natural for heterogeneity to exist in all orders of society. That is, disagreement on matters that are fundamental for development and the future is inherent and inevitable in a free society. Thus, the question of the possibility of achieving agreements on the future is relevant.

Pierre Manent* argues that in a free and therefore diverse society, unity does not mean thinking alike, unity means acting together. Manent suggests that nations count on common anchors that define them in terms of nationality, history and cultural foundations, all of which implies that this is not about enemies to the death, but instead about persons who, plain and simple, think distinctly and that, thus, the political task should consist of finding the spaces under which everyone can participate without that implying coinciding in everything. Under that premise, an effective leadership would procure uniting efforts to a greater degree than imposing a particular vision.

Unfortunately, Mexican politics has been polarized for many years, a situation that has been exacerbated in this government, essentially because everything has been organized and structured, intentionally or not, around the disagreements that exist more than on the coincidences. This, intrinsic as it is in the processes of political rivalry, does not contribute to the building of agreements during non-electoral times and much less so when the express objective is that of honing the divisions.

In a political system with such level of concentration of power like Mexico’s,  the leadership ends up being crucial. A good leader can contribute to resolving problems and to paving the way for development, while a negative leader can undermine the sources of growth and limit the country’s long-term viability. It is that concentration of power that keeps Mexico permanently up in the air: with everything in the end depending on the person occupying the office of the presidency. Even great leadership that proves benign but that does not contribute to institutionalizing that power and to creating conditions for unity in the previously mentioned sense, ends up being insufficient for truly attending to the enormous challenges that the country faces.

In sum, we Mexicans have two very distinct but complementary challenges: one is that of creating the conditions to unify the efforts of the entire society for the sake of advancing toward greater development, and, in the political ambit, peace and stability. The other is that of proceeding toward institutionalizing power to consolidate the efforts of the whole of society. This has to do with two distinct conduits, but ones that unite and end up in the same place: the capacity and disposition of the leadership to act on both fronts.

What is common, or at least frequent, in Mexican history is that presidents aim to bring together the citizenry for the country to prosper. That has been particularly perceptible during the past three decades during which an attempt was made to create general mechanisms where everyone who could fit -citizens in the electoral environment, entrepreneurs in investment, unions in the labor space and   politicians in the legislative sphere- would carry out their functions without having to resort to special favors or permissions at each corner. The present government has gone back to controlling all of the processes, not always successfully, but the very fact of attempting to do so has had the effect of limiting the potential for development.

What the country requires is moving on to the next stage: not only to general rules, ever more institutionalized rules and with mechanisms that transcend the capacity of a sole president, even of whoever promotes them, to alter the rules at will. Philip Wallach** says that majority rule is about “domesticating brute political force into a somewhat gentler form.” Whoever wins in 2024, the country requires a distinct government, one appropriate for the XXI century and the circumstances, such as nearshoring, which only come once in history.

*Democracy Without Nations? **Why Congress

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof