“We are going to have a more radicalized Trump with disastrous consequences.”

Following Donald Trump's victory in the United States elections, Leandro Morgenfeld, from the University of Buenos Aires and CONICET of Argentina, and co-coordinator of the CLACSO Working Group "Studies on the United States", spoke with CLACSO.tv.

Regarding this, Morgenfeld analyzed: “Beyond Trump, whom many said 'disappeared, he'll go to jail for the Capitol siege, he'll have to retire from politics,' we said Trumpism didn't disappear. It will be with him or with another figure, but there's a fracture that's being expressed in the strategy of a sector of the ruling class and that of sectors below, even the working and middle classes, who were saying 'we want something else, it's not going to disappear.' Now we know that Trump recovered, purged the Republican Party, and even many of those who were part of his administration supported Kamala Harris's candidacy. And we're going to have a Trump recharged. We have to see what he did and what he couldn't do in his first presidency. But we have a Trump who controls both houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives, who has an ultraconservative Supreme Court, something that didn't happen in his first term (...). And we also have a Trump who won the popular vote. In 2016, he lost by 3 million votes. Despite all the court convictions (...), he has a Republican Party that he now controls, which we are seeing in these first two weeks since his election.”

“We are going to have a much more radicalized Trump, which I think is a huge problem for very important sectors of the American population, including some who trusted his popular or populist rhetoric, his anti-elite rhetoric. But I think it will have very disastrous consequences for the whole world, and especially for Latin America,” he asserted.

Regarding the prospects for his foreign policy, he noted that it “confronts the strategy of the globalist wing, that is, the idea that the United States can continue to dominate the world as it did at the beginning of the post-Cold War era. Why? Because in the 7st century, the United States is starting a series of wars or military interventions that it cannot win (…). So, Trump is saying, 'We can no longer rule the world as before; we have to negotiate spheres of influence.' There is a relative retreat by the United States, (…) that is, trying to de-escalate some conflicts in the world to concentrate on the confrontation with China. And trying to separate Russia from China (…). They say, 'We have to retreat to control our backyard,' as they call Latin America and the Caribbean. That is to say, there will be a strengthening and militarization of politics in Latin America. That is why what we learned seven days ago, the nomination of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, is very worrying. A Cuban-American, a staunch enemy of the Cuban Revolution and of Venezuela. The United States, which lifted some sanctions against Venezuela in the last two years, allowing it to recover, is going to increase them significantly. But Rubio is not only against what they called the 'troika of evil,' but against all nationalist, reformist, populist, and leftist governments in the region.”

Interviewed by Gustavo Lema.