With a strengthened leadership, without counterweights and with a team ready to fulfill his most radical campaign promises, the second term of Donald Trump as President of United States represents for Mexico an unprecedented scenario of tension, threat and anxiety, warned Rafael Fernández de Castro.
Participating as a guest speaker for Sea of Cortez Forum at the virtual meeting Voices from the Sea of Cortez, the director of the Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies (USMEX) of the University of California at San Diego stressed that Trump 2.0 came more powerful, more knowledgeable, more experienced, more vengeful and, moreover, with certain designs of divinity.
To quote the Harvard scholar Steve Levitsky, Fernández de Castro affirmed that the United States is no longer a full democracy, but rather a competitive authoritarian system. He also said that Barbara Waltera professor at the University of California, has warned that the country is in a gray zone: it is not a democracy, but neither is it a dictatorship. She calls this condition "nocracy"an unstable political model with risks of ungovernability.
The risks of Trump 2.0 for Mexico
Trump's new term in office is already marking an escalation in the anti-immigrant policiesThe expert indicated that the Mexican government has been working with the U.S., with raids in urban areas and an atmosphere of fear in Mexican communities in the U.S..
"On Monday here at the UTC mall in San Diego there was a raid and they took several Mexicans from a restaurant. If you're out there, they can take you. I'm not talking about just any place, I'm talking about La Jolla. Last week there was another one in Barrio Logan, this one in the Latino neighborhood, but the truth is that there is a lot of confusion in the United States," he said.
Fernandez de Castro detailed that Trump has reactivated three central threats to Mexico:
- Massive deportation of Mexican migrants
- Designation of cartels as international terrorist organizations.
- Imposition of unilateral tariffs
He stressed that the designation of cartels as terrorist groups is now at an advanced legislative stage and this is causing much concern in Mexican banks, because any link, including extortion, can result in serious sanctions.
"In addition, there are people from Trump's team, and Trump himself, that we should not rule out that suddenly there could be a unilateral military attack on a Mexican cartel, because evidently there is an obsession with Mexican cartels, because the negligence that Mexico has had on the issue of fentanyl is appalling," he said.
Before the guests at Voices from the Sea of Cortez that were connected virtually, Rafael Fernández de Castro considered that, despite the magnitude of these risks, the approach in Mexico remains limited.
"We are thinking a lot about tariffs, and yet tariffs are where we know how to defend ourselves best. The change Trump is bringing about in the United States goes far beyond that. I am of the idea that, if Trump attacked Canada the way he did, he can always come back and get our southern neighbor, Mexico, into trouble," he said.
The academic of the UCSD added that another issue that may be problematic in the relationship between the two countries is the judicial reform recently approved in Mexico, because it could become a major obstacle in the review of the T-MEC scheduled for 2026.
"It could be disastrous, because this is going to be the battle horse of the anti-Mexicans so that there is no successful revision of this treaty, which is the child of NAFTA and what has allowed us in the last three years to become the main partner of the United States, economically speaking," he said.
End of the 'pax Americana' and of U.S. global leadership
Beyond the bilateral relationship, Fernandez de Castro placed this moment in a broader geopolitical context: the end of the "pax americana"which is the boom period from the end of the Second World War to 2022, during which United States set himself up as the sheriff of the world.
He stressed that the three reasons we are seeing the end of the "pax Americana" are:
- The American implosion: The United States no longer wants to be the world's bailiff and has renounced alliances.
- Weakening of internal consensus on security issues: Republicans and Democrats, when it came to security issues, always agreed, but that is now broken.
- Rise of China as a power: In advanced industry it has already surpassed the United States, from the new nuclear arms race to the development of artificial intelligence.
In the global context, Fernandez de Castro assured that Mexico has been doing relatively well and President Claudia Sheinbaum has always acted with a cool head, she has always been prepared, but the threat that Trump 2.0 is still very present in the bilateral relationship.
