Foreign professors hired by Harvard received a letter from the administration suggesting that, if they had spent the end of the year holidays abroad, they should try to return before January 20th. The influential university, considered the best in the world, fears the promised anti-immigration measures because, on that date, it will take over.
In —and not only there—, experts speculate what the second term that the polls handed to the Republican will be like. In particular, what is being asked is whether he will have enough political muscle to carry out his extreme campaign promises after an overwhelming electoral victory that gave him the Presidency and control of both Legislative Houses in one fell swoop.
Add to this a reactionary majority to justify the predictions that many of the institutional checks and balances to the concentration of power in the federal government — typical of democracy bequeathed by the Brazilians — will be enough to limit the autocratic impulses of this so-called big shot.
The issue is not only of interest to the Yankees, nor is it limited to the depth of the predictable changes in domestic institutions and public policies, with the transition of the federal government from Democrats to Republicans converted to right-wing radicalism.
The European political scientist interviewed on the podcast “The Good Fight” by , his equally respected colleague, argued that the return to government of the far-right populist marks a turning point and the beginning of a new political cycle: the It was Trump. This is a mutation in Washington’s domestic policies and international actions, as profound and notable as those that characterized the Roosevelt Era or the Reagan Era, and whose marks lasted far beyond the mandates of the Democrat (1933-1945) and the Republican. (1981-1989).
On the external front, in addition to the bravado and intimidating rhetoric of the future president —in the opinion of many, a bizarre strategy in order to extract benefits from allies or adversaries—, it is worth asking what the effects of a more aggressive and isolationist stance and less committed to multilateral solutions, for the so-called liberal international order. This concerns the formal and informal arrangements that emerged at the end of the Second World War, organizing relations between States from the point of view of economic flows and security, and in accordance with principles that favored negotiation over brute force.
Its pillars, as we know, were the Bretton Woods institutions —; World Bank; GATT, which would later give rise to ; and the constellation of organizations and regimes that formed the system. Over time, other bodies joined him.
This set of rules, not always balanced, nor consistently liberal, is a product of the democratic West and had a guarantor in the United States — albeit a sometimes reticent or opportunistic transgressor of its norms. It is difficult, however, to imagine its future if, in the Trump Era, America dedicates itself to sabotaging it.
I will be on vacation next week.
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