Yes, we have a very popular President. Yes, the majority of Mexicans continue to believe the president that we are undergoing a great transformation of historical dimensions, equivalent to Independence, the Reform and the Revolution. Very well. But the reality is that López Obrador’s economic project has been a failure.
I don’t say it, the numbers say it.
Let’s start with economic growth. In his campaign, AMLO did not tire of criticizing the mediocrity of the neoliberal period. Indeed, since the market-oriented reforms began, Mexico’s Gross Domestic Product has grown, on average, by just over two percent per year. Well, that damn 2% today looks tremendously appetizing.
AMLO promised to grow, on average, 4% per year during his six-year term. He was campaigning and, as we know, making promises doesn’t kill. The Mexican economy, however, has begun to cool down since AMLO won the election and, in particular, when he canceled work on the new airport in Texcoco in October 2018. Although the United States economy continued to grow solidly, Mexican GDP it decreased -0.2% in 2019, the first for AMLO.
Then came the covid that generated a great global recession. Mexico, however, was one of the countries with the worst falls in its GDP: -8.4% in 2020.
The following year, that is, 2021, came the global recovery. The Mexican economy was no exception. Solid growth of over 6% for the year was expected, but it turns out that the second half of 2021 was poor. Everything indicates that, in the last two quarters of the year, the Mexican GDP contracted, that is, it had negative growth rates, which means that technically we entered a recession. When the final numbers come out, it looks like GDP growth would have been somewhere around 5% a year in 2021.
In this way, we are still far from recovering the level that the economy had before the covid-19 pandemic, and even further from when AMLO took office in 2018. Worse still, we have the highest inflation in the last twenty years: more than 7% per year. The terrible specter of stagflation begins to loom.
It could be said, however, that the economy has fallen, but social equality has improved. It’s not like that. Today we know that the pandemic generated more inequality around the world: the rich got richer, the poor poorer. Mexico was not the exception. According to the World Inequality Report 2022, in our country the 10% of the most prosperous population kept 79% of the wealth. Two years after AMLO won, promising greater social equality, we are worse off and below similar countries such as Brazil and Argentina.
Not to mention the tycoons with multi-million dollar fortunes. There is no change there. The privileged with fortunes of billions of dollars continue to have the right of latch in the National Palace. Before, according to AMLO, they were “the mafia of power.” Today they are his “advisors” and “friends”. In fact, he has recommended that three of them buy Banamex now that City is going to put it up for sale. Where is the great transformation?
One last indicator: the number of poor. As there were no social programs to support the population during the pandemic, four million Mexicans who were part of the lower middle class, very vulnerable, but middle class after all, fell into poverty. In this way, by the end of 2020, there were 58.2 million Mexicans living in poverty, 43.5% of the population.
Three years of lopezobradorismo have produced a drop in economic growth, greater social inequality, continuity of the great oligarchs and an increase in the poor.
Faced with this reality, the only thing the government has to boast about is that it has raised the minimum wage by 60% during this six-year term, which I welcome. Very well. But it turns out that, due to the struggles of the Mexican economy, there are more and more workers earning minimum wage. Between October 2020 and October 2021, the number of people with that income increased by 1.7 points.
A lot of transformation, a lot of popularity, a lot of talk, plus an adverse reality. AMLO’s economic project is a failure. The President has not even found a name for such a project. “Moral economy,” he tells her, which was the name of a column in the newspaper La Jornada. Others call it post-neoliberalism without much creativity. Well, it turns out that the “post” has been worse than the “neo” plain.
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