Voices of Mexico no. 104

Our Voice

A year after Donald Trump’s surprising electoral win sparked many fears, it is time to reflect on the effects his presidency has had in many areas, both domestic and international. They have almost all been negative, not only for certain sectors of U.S. Americans, but also for the inhabitants of other regions and all of humanity.
Our analysis has to be nuanced, however: while many of his most polemical and concerning campaign promises have remained mere electoral propaganda, others have been blocked at least temporarily. This has been brought about by the opposition of political democratic institutions of his own country, such as Congress or the courts, by the international system’s multilateral bodies, and even by other leaders and heads of state, who have begun to exercise leadership on global issues that the United States has retreated from. This is the case of the Paris Accords on climate change; the United States is today the only nation that has announced its withdrawal from those accords, when even the last two dissident countries, Syria and Nicaragua, recently signed them. Special mention should be made of the resistance to his policies on his own soil, mainly from organized civil society and local city and state governments, led by governors and mayors.