Mexico’s Democratic Backsliding, With Shannon K. O’Neil

LINDSAY:
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Welcome to The President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States. I'm Jim Lindsay, director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is Mexico's democratic backsliding.

 

With me to discuss Mexico's new electoral law and other developments that may be eroding. The country's democratic governance is Shannon O'Neill. Shannon is the vice president of Studies and Nelson and David Rockefeller senior fellow for Latin-America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She's an expert on Mexico and Latin-America, as well as on global trade and supply chains, and she heads up the council's Future of Democracy Initiative. Shannon is the author of Two Nations' Indivisible, Mexico, the United States, and the Road Ahead. In her newest book is, The Globalization Myth: Why Regions Matter. Shannon, thanks for joining me.

 

O'NEIL:
It's always a pleasure to join you,

 

LINDSAY:
Shannon, a lot of our listeners have seen the video last month in Mexican cities with hundreds of thousands of Mexicans taking to the streets to protest a new election law that they argue will undermine Mexico's democracy. Nonetheless, the Mexican Congress passed the bill. Can you just help us understand what this new law change is?

 

O'NEIL:
So, this new law is an attempt by the López Obrador administration, the President of Mexico, to undermine and really to defund the INE, and the INE is the National Electoral Institute. This is the independent body that oversees elections in Mexico, federal elections, but as well as state and local elections and really sets the rules for Mexico's democracy. It is an institution that has gained strength since Mexico became a democracy, the beginning of the 21st century, and it's one of the more respected institutions within Mexico.

 

Now what this law would do, this is the second shot that the administration has taken at the electoral institute. They first tried to change the constitution and they were unable to do that to undermine the INE. So this one, basically, it defund the INE, it cuts it off in that sense. It changes a bit how the individuals that are part of INE, how they're elected and how they're chosen. So moving away from a technocratic model to a more politicized model. But the real effort here is to... It also limits the INE's ability, the electoral institute's ability to punish those who break campaign laws, who spend money illegally and the like. And this is something actually that the administration and MORENA, the political party of López Obrador has been caught in a few times in the last few years while he has been president. So, the idea here is really to take INE out of the game or make it much, much weaker before Mexico heads into presidential elections in 2024.

 

LINDSAY:
So explain to me, Shannon, why is it that AMLO, common nickname for the president of Mexico, pushed this law? After all, INE certified his election back in 2018. He obviously has an argument to the Mexican people about why he's doing it. What is that argument?

 

O'NEIL:
So, his argument is, one, that INE is very expensive and the Mexican government, "We shouldn't be spending money on this and very high salaries for these people, these bureaucrats, these technocrats. Instead that money should go to social programs. It should go to the millions of poor people in Mexico." So part of it is where money should go. The other part is, that he is actually much more suspicious of the INE than others within Mexico are. And in fact, he has run for president three times, he won the third time around. But especially the first time that he ran, there was a real question, the election was very tight in 2006.

 

LINDSAY:
This was 2006?

 

O'NEIL:
Exactly. And he felt that he should have come out on top. He didn't believe the results and so he felt that the, it was actually the predecessor to the INE, it was called the IFE at the time, but whatever the acronym was, it was basically the same type of body, and he felt that they had done him wrong. So, he's always been suspicious of this body and that's part of the motivation here, is to clean the slate and make it much easier for him to push forward his candidates in the election to come.

 

LINDSAY:
So walk me through that, because you mentioned that Mexicans will go to the polls next year to elect a new president, they will elect a new congress. AMLO is term limited; he cannot run for reelection. So how precisely does this electoral law reform or change improve his chances to get his way?

 

O'NEIL:
It would arguably improve his chances for his political party to get its way? AMLO is a very popular politician. We talk about Teflon politicians and he is the epitome of one. His approval ratings have remained very high despite COVID, despite economic recession, despite very difficult issues in terms of insecurity and violence and the like. He personally has remained popular even as his policies have not remained popular.

 

But as you say, he is not able to run this time. Mexico, since the early 20th century has had a rule of no reelection. And so, he will finish his six-year term in 2024 and will be turning over the reins to someone. Now, he would like to turn it over to a candidate from his own party, from MORENA. And this is where not having INE oversight, not having the electoral institute watching campaign financing, as well as the president's own campaigning. Because according to Mexican electoral law, the president is not allowed to use his position to go out and campaign for other people, whether it's at the federal level or the state and local level. So it really, if the INE is there and in full power, it would hamstring his ability to put a lot of momentum behind his chosen candidates when the elections come in 2024.

 

LINDSAY:
I like the fact that you mentioned that AMLO has been referred to as a Teflon president, Shannon. And indeed, just before sitting down to have this conversation, I thought I would check out his public approval ratings. They are about 63 percent, which is down from the first month of his term when they were 89 percent. But I think most politicians, including the president of the United States, would love to have a public approval rating of 63 percent. So I have to ask the question, why is it that AMLO is able to maintain his popularity, when as you note, a lot of the trends in Mexico are actually going in the wrong direction and so many Mexicans are very concerned about this electoral change.

 

O'NEIL:
It is a few different reasons. The first reason I would say is, that AMLO, unlike almost any president before him, really has gotten out there in the grassroots and put the shoe leather and has visited, as he will say, every single municipality in Mexico over the last number of years. So people have met him. And he's still, even as president, he spends less time in the presidential office, he spends so much time on the road, he really likes engaging with people. So there's a connection that people feel, they've met AMLO, or their family has met AMLO. So that is part of it.

 

The other part is he does set himself up vis-a-vis as opposition to Mexico's elites. He speaks in a different way. He speaks much more slowly and in a different way. He goes to places that Mexican elites don't go. He approaches things in a different way. And so, I think there is a whole set of Mexican voters who were searching for something different and they found him to be that person that is different. So that's one part of it, is that he represents something different than many of the other politicians that they've had to choose from in the past and they like that.

 

The other issue is, the reason AMLO was elected is that he had, I would argue, the diagnosis of Mexico's problems right. He focused on corruption and he focused on crime. Those two issues were really two big issues that were bringing Mexico down, that were affecting people's day-to-day lives in very negative ways. Now, the policies he's put in place since he's become president have really done nothing to take on either corruption or crime, but he still talks about it.

 

He has a morning press conference that he holds every day. I think the shortest one has been an hour, some of them have run three plus hours long. And in that he talks about fighting corruption, he talks about fighting insecurity, he talks about helping people who are on the outside or marginalized, even if his policies and the data that we've collected over the last four plus years of his presidency, even if none of those things have actually happened. Corruption remains as high as ever. Crime remains as high as ever. He hasn't been able to change these elements, but he talks about as if he has changed them. And so, many people are willing to give him a benefit of doubt. They feel like at least he's talking about these issues even if their day-to-day reality hasn't changed on the ground.

 

LINDSAY:
My sense is, he personally has been very frugal or tried to project the image that he's a frugal president. Believe it one time, maybe he still does, he was going to fly commercial aircraft and he's scaled down a number of the presidential perks. Does this resonate with Mexicans?

 

O'NEIL:
That does resonate with Mexicans, yes. And he does fly commercial. While he's out there on the campaign trail, you might run into him sitting in 26C next to you, in terms of airplanes and the like. We have seen many members of his family are not quite as frugal as he are and there have been some questions about spending and jobs and houses and the like out there. One of the things he has been able to do though, and this is his morning press conference that he holds every single morning, is he has been able to control the narrative. And he is been very successful in doing that, in part because he just has the microphone and everybody reports on it. And in part, because the opposition to AMLO has remained so far quite fragmented, different political parties, different civil society organizations, and it's been hard to take on this sort of monolith or this media monolith that he presents every morning.

 

LINDSAY:
So, where are Mexico's opposition parties, the PAN or the PRI? Why aren't they succeeding in mobilizing Mexicans to shore up a Mexican democracy?

 

O'NEIL:
One of their challenges, this is why AMLO got elected, was they were often associated with the crime and corruption. It was under their watch that you saw things go south for so many Mexicans. So there's a frustration with those parties, that's in part. Two is that, when you're out of power, you have less money to put around, you have less ability to bring people to your party. In fact, many of the MORENA, the López Obrador president's his party, many of the governors and the local state level legislatures were former PAN, were former PRI, were former PRD, another party, because they saw the winner and they joined. And when you look at MORENA, it is a very big umbrella party. It has people from a market driven right, or market based economics, it has the communist party, it has all sorts of parties within this big umbrella.

 

LINDSAY:
That's a big tent.

 

O'NEIL:
It's a big tent, and partly because it's a winning tent and there's favors to be doled out, there's money to be doled out and there's campaigns to win and this is how you win in many of the ways. Another reason why weakening the INE is a big part of the program here, is because some of the things to bring those people on and some of the campaigns have been shown by the INE in the past, and as we look at these last four years to have broken the campaign rules in order to get their people ahead.

 

So, what has happened to the opposition? The other problem with the opposition is, there are many parties and the challenge is bringing together those politicians who have different political platforms. Some are more market friendly than others, some are more focused on various issues and others. And partly it's the personalities. Mexico is not unlike the United States or other countries and lots of people want to be president, lots of people want to be senator. And so, when you bring three or more parties together, who's going to actually get the nomination? There's some jostling within a coalition in that sense.

 

LINDSAY:
So Shannon, if a big part of AMLO's success is his personal charisma, that he's able to speak to ordinary Mexicans, they see him as their champion fighting for a better life. I'm curious, going into the 2024 election, is that charisma transferrable? Can he deputize someone as his successor and Mexicans will fall in line or is he in essence someone who can't be replaced?

 

O'NEIL:
It's unlikely his coattails will be able to carry on. Because one, he's not going to be on the ballot. So that is a challenge, obviously, for the person who is aspiring to be president. But for the whole lineup, those who are going into Congress or state level election. So that is a real worry for his party. The other thing is, AMLO, as you know famously in the United States, Trump said, "I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and you'd still vote for me." AMLO has a little bit of that element too within Mexico, he could do whatever he wanted and there's a core group of Mexicans who would vote for him, and did in the last election.

 

But the other thing that happened in 2018, is there was a whole other group of Mexicans who had not traditionally been with AMLO who voted for him, they voted for change. And so, half of Mexico's population voted for AMLO then. Those people are a bit more transient. That is often the middle class, those with higher education levels and the like. And I think it's doubtful that they necessarily transfer automatically to the MORENA candidate. In fact, given what's happened in terms of the economy, in terms of crime, in terms of corruption, I think the MORENA candidate will really have to try to win those people over, I think they are looking for an alternative. So, some of AMLO's base will vote for his chosen candidate and he will be pushing that candidate, even though electoral laws say he's not supposed to campaign for that particular candidate. But he will not be able to transfer it over. And many of the people who are proposed as candidates just don't have the charisma that he does.

 

LINDSAY:
When you talk about a MORENA voter, Shannon, what would the profile be? Is this a party that is stronger in one part of the country than another or in certain states versus other states? Is it a class issue? How do you explain what a MORENA voter is?

 

O'NEIL:
Like the party, which is a big umbrella party, there's a bit of a mix of people who vote for MORENA. But the hardcore loyalists, I would say, that group tends to be from the south of Mexico, so the poorer part of Mexico. They tend to be from the less educated groups within Mexico. They tend to be from the lower paying side of Mexico, in terms of jobs. They tend to be from the informal economy, so the kinds of jobs that aren't registered that have social security and other kinds of benefits are tied to them. These are the people who run their own taco shop or sell things on the street or all kinds of other jobs that are part of the informal economy, which is very large in Mexico.

 

And what's interesting is, in 2018 you saw a whole other group vote for Moreno. You saw the actually higher educated people, the people with college degrees, you saw people in formal jobs, you saw professors and intellectuals and others vote for MORENA at that time. And that is the segment where, as I look at the upcoming elections in 2024, I think that's going to be the weakest part for MORENA. Lots of those people that wanted a change from the old system, so voted for MORENA, now see what has happened, they can read the economic data, they do read the economic data and listen to the press and the like. And so, they are going to be the ones who leave the MORENA coalition this time around. And it's going to be much more a south, a sort of lower income, lower socioeconomic levels.

 

LINDSAY:
Well then of course, it's going to be a question of what the alternative choices are, who are the candidates presented by the other political parties?

 

O'NEIL:
And that is, you can't beat something with nothing. And that is the big challenge for the opposition. And there are a few efforts right now in Mexico's civil society leaders and others trying to pool together the parties to come up with a cohesive platform, having one candidate. Because we also know, Mexico is also an electoral system where it's a winner take all. So even with a plurality, there's no runoff, so even if you only get-

 

LINDSAY:
Just like the United States.

 

O'NEIL:
... Just like United States. Even if you only get 35 percent of the vote because the rest of the votes split between five or six candidates, you still win. You don't have to win 50 plus percent of the vote. And so, for MORENA, the best thing that can happen is all of the opposition parties put up their candidates in all these places. For the opposition, the best thing they can do, is that they put one candidate forward for each of the posts and then they have a really good shot at winning many of them.

 

LINDSAY:
But it can be very difficult to get opposition parties to agree on a single candidate. I will note that in Turkey right now, that's exactly what the opposition parties are trying to do to unseat President Erdoğan and that has been a very difficult, turbulent process. They have a candidate, but it's not at all clear that the parties are going to provide the support they would if it were their own candidate. 

 

But I'm struck Shannon, as we're watching this debate about election laws in Mexico unfold. I haven't heard a lot from the Biden administration about this topic. And I say I'm surprised because the Biden administration, President Biden came into office talking about the fundamental fault line of world politics being between democracies and autocracies and a Biden administration was going to be committed to defending democracy around the world, trying to shore it up. But again, I don't think the administration said much about what's happening just south of the border.

 

O'NEIL:
We have not heard many strong statements about what's happening in Mexico. Secretary Blinken and the State Department did come out and say something when this march was happening of opposition and hundreds of thousands of people showed up in Mexico's main square in Zócalo--so, did a shout out for support of the people and their democracy, but we've seen very little. And what the Biden administration to me has been doing or it seems that they've been doing, is when they have tensions with the Mexican government or when they have issues that they're worried about, they have been mostly going behind closed doors. So whether that is the state of U.S. energy companies in Mexico and their property rights that they have there, whether it is issues in terms of electoral democracy, whether it's issues of security, a lot of issues, even water issues, border issues and the like. Most of it, they've been taking it behind closed doors with the thought that it's better to work with AMLO quietly, I mean you're more likely to get somewhere doing it quietly, than confronting them in the newspapers or other kinds of speeches.

 

Now the challenge is perhaps, that by doing that then AMLO has an open space for the things that are priorities for him. And I would say, one of his biggest priorities is this domestic political agenda, which is in many ways recreating one umbrella hegemonic party that then can win whether on its own or perhaps with a little assist from less than democratic means, but can win election, election after election. And that is what the PRE did, which AMLO grew up in as a young man in the 1970s, it was sort of the height of their power. And that really to me is what MORENA is, he's trying to do or aspires to do, is recreate that party.

 

LINDSAY:
Just briefly explain what the PRE was and how it dominated Mexican politics for a good chunk of the 20th century.

 

O'NEIL:
The PRE was a political party that came out of the Mexican Revolution, which was in 1917, it evolved in the 1930s and '40s. And for almost seventy years, the PRE really controlled Mexico's politics. It was a big umbrella party, so it had divisions, for labor for what they call campesinos, so people, farmers and the like, for business, for the military, for others. And the idea here was, that you would sort of fight your political battles within the PRE and get different slots, different posts within the government and the like. But it would be one political party, and there were always very small opposition parties to make it look like a democracy or at least have some veneer of that. The PAN, which is now a party that had held the presidency in the early 2000s, it was actually the long-term opposition party, but it was very small at the time.

 

And the way they finessed electoral laws, they had democracy de jure, so the rules were there, but de facto, it was really just one party and they would manipulate ballot boxes and other kinds of things. They were also known for mobilizing people, giving you a sandwich and putting you on a bus to get you to the polls. And MORENA has picked up some of these things, where they pay people, basically to get them to the polls to vote in various ways. So that too, there's some of the policies of the PRE have made a recurrence now in the 2020s again.

 

LINDSAY:
Well, my sense AMLO also in his bones feels much of the attitude of the traditional PRE, he's not a fan of the United States as best I can tell, he's more a fan of self-sufficiency that Mexico should basically be able to produce goods and operate on its own. He's not someone who's off to Davos to embrace a globalization agenda or anything like that. Is that a fair summary?

 

O'NEIL:
It is. The PRE being this umbrella party, over time it had somewhat amorphous or quixotic overall policy. It was very hard to decide if it was right or left. But what it was and what MORENA is, is much more economically nationalist. A national oil sector, a national pride in the agricultural, a national, that sort of thing. And that we definitely see AMLO bringing back.

 

LINDSAY:
Okay, so then I have to ask that question, Shannon, since you've written a lot about supply chain, the potential for increased economic integration between the United States and Mexico, how is AMLO's embrace of a more economically nationalist policy agenda working out for the Mexicans?

 

O'NEIL:
Well, it's not great. The one thing you see happening right now because of U.S.-China tensions, because of other geopolitical changes around the world, is you see a huge tailwind for Mexico in terms of near-shoring and moving of supply chains. This is a moment when the only way, I believe, United States will solve its national security issues about supply chains is with Mexico and Canada. They will have to have a North American platform and manufacturing base if we're going to see some self-sufficiency from the United States, or sufficient away from China, which is really what the concern is of the Biden administration and frankly the U.S. Congress on a bilateral basis.

 

But Mexico has to be part of this. And so ,you see this huge wave of interest and investment and capacity moving towards Mexico despite the policies of the AMLO government, despite the economic nationalism, despite the suspicion of some of this money and the companies that are moving in. So, what's interesting right now is, if you go to the border, you see industrial parks being built, you see backlogs at the border. I was just in Laredo and you could see the line of trucks that were lining up trying to come into the United States, as well as going from the United States down into Mexico because of the supply chain aspect of all of this. But this isn't because of the federal government in Mexico, in fact, it's really despite.

 

LINDSAY:
What about what's happening on the violence front. Big news in the last week, four Americans went across the border near Matamoros, I believe two of the Americans were killed. There's been a lot of news stories about violence throughout Mexico, fueled in good part by the various drug cartels. Has AMLO been able to get a hold on that or has the problem gotten worse?

 

O'NEIL:
The short answer is no, he has not been able to get a hold on it. And so, while economic nationalism and challenges over energy are big issue for companies thinking of locating in Mexico or already located in Mexico, the security side is as important if not more important for a lot of those that are thinking of moving there and really for the economic activity there. And the challenge here is, AMLO has changed the security structure. He's moved away from state forces or law enforcement and civil law enforcement to bring the military in as the main body or the main group that's supposed to bring security and stability to Mexico.

 

But the challenge here is that, it's not just, as we like to talk about here in the United States, it's not just drug cartels, it is really organized crime. And here you need local intelligence. You need to shut down extortion networks on blocks within cities. You need to worry about people who kidnap or who have other kinds of contraband alongside drugs. And this really is the challenge for doing business in Mexico, is that there are local gangs or local people who extort your workers or make it hard for you to transport your goods or your inputs in and out. So this is not something that the AMLO government has taken on or made better, and frankly, the policy to move the security to the military versus a civilian police make it unlikely that in the rest of his term that those numbers are going to get better, that we're going to see security improve.

 

LINDSAY:
Now, I know you wrote a piece for cfr.org back in December on this. Could you sort of explain to me why it is that investing more in the military won't solve this problem?

 

O'NEIL:
So it's a few different reasons. One is, militaries around the world are not trained to provide rule of law. They're not trained to go after robbers. They're not trained to go after that, right? They're trained to go and face the foe, often abroad, but it's a different kind of training. So, their inclination, which is the way they've trained to be, is shoot to kill, because that's what they do. So that's not necessarily what you want, especially when the crimes that are happening are happening in dense urban populations with lots of civilians and families and the like, so that's one challenge.

 

The other challenge is intelligence. If you really want to stop criminal networks, you need to understand who they are and where they come from and the kinds of businesses models they have and where their money goes and that sort of thing. And that's really about, both community police officers who are on the ground, who neighbors say, "Hey, you got to go to that house because that's where it's happening." You need that trust of the community, which the military that comes and goes doesn't have. But it also really means building up networks of intelligence. It's a very different kind of model of taking on crime.

 

And then the final thing is, we have examples all around the world, and including in Mexico in the past of civilian police actually being able to get violence under control. Violence doesn't disappear. We know that. But there are examples in the city of Monterey, which is one of the big industrial cities or the city of Ciudad Juárez, which is across the border from El Paso, Texas, where these were very violent places in the last decade and bringing together a local business community, the civilian police forces, the local governments, they were able to improve policing and they were able to improve safety in those cities, and largely because of community policing. And the military's just not set up to do that.

 

LINDSAY:
So surveying current trends in developments in Mexico, Shannon, what would your advice to the Biden administration be? What should they be doing, or perhaps just as valuable, what is it they're doing right now that they shouldn't be doing?

 

O'NEIL:
So, one thing the Biden administration should be doing, and I know they've got a lot on their plate, there's a few things happening in other parts of the world, but Mexico-

 

LINDSAY:
But Mexico also shares a border with the United States, which gives it outsized importance.

 

O'NEIL:
Exactly. China doesn't share a border. The Ukraine and Russia do not share a border, but Mexico shares an almost 2000-mile long border. And so many of the issues that are happening in Mexico, we get a taste of it with migration and we see that in the day to days, as you see them in the news and the like. But there's so many issues here, and we have been so lucky in the United States to be able to take for granted stability next door. And this is something that perhaps we won't be able to take for granted if things continue where Mexico is headed.

 

And what's vital to stability in Mexico, in my view, is that Mexico keeps its democracy. For all of its warts, for all the challenges of democracy, and we know them here in the United States as well. It is a way for people to be represented. It is a way for people's voices to be heard. And it is a way to make incremental changes that are better and more inclusive for a larger group of people. If you don't have that stability, if you don't have that democracy and you don't have that outlet, then we will see, in my view, probably more crime. We will see more migration of Mexicans to the United States. We will see insecurity just to the south of our border where there are a lot of challenges for the United States there.

 

LINDSAY:
Shannon, I have to ask what you make of the recent spate of calls from Republican lawmakers of taking military action along the southern border against drug cartels based in Mexico. I will note that this has certainly caught the attention of AMLO. He has said that if there's any kind of aggression against Mexico or talk about it, he's going to encourage Mexican and Hispanic-Americans not vote for Republican candidates. But we're obviously at the beginning of a presidential election campaign, I don't think that these calls are going to stop any time soon. How should we think about him? Is this all political theater? Does it have real substantive consequences to the relationship?

 

O'NEIL:
While I would argue that the Biden administration should say more about Mexican democracy, should defend institutes like the electoral institute or the Freedom of Information Act or the other kinds of independent checks and balances in Mexico's government, I would not argue for military interventions in Mexico. One, because this is a sovereign country and we don't do those sorts of things in other countries in this sense, so that makes no sense. But two, and it's back to the point about AMLO relying on the Mexican military, the U.S. relying on the U.S. military to take on what we call drug cartels, but are really organized crime networks, that's not how you will actually diminish this threat to Mexicans and to those in the United States. Think about if you had sent in the U.S. military to take on the Italian mafia in New York City in the 1950s or '60s, that's not how you would've rooted at the mafia.

 

How did we root out the mafia? We did it through local police officers, we did it through courts, we did it through things like the RICO Act and developing court cases to install the rule of law to dismantle these organized crime networks. And that's what Mexico needs to do. And that's where I think the United States can actually be helpful. Can we help them with the kinds of judicial changes, the kinds of training for lawyers and doctors, the kind of vetted police units and others that would allow you to build that trust with communities to make those communities better. But sending in the U.S. military, it looks showy and it's a drastic thing to, it gets you on the news, but it's not actually going to solve the problem for Mexico or for the United States.

 

LINDSAY:
So I have to ask Shannon, you wrote a book called Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, the United States, and the Road Ahead. My recollection is that your concluding chapter was very positive on what the United States and Mexico could achieve going forward if they were willing to put aside historical animosities and focus on their current interests. So I'm just curious, looking back at it, do you retain the same degree of optimism or are you concerned where this very important bilateral relationship is going?

 

O'NEIL:
I am concerned. I think the possibilities are still there for close relationships and both countries benefiting from ties to the other. And in fact, with the fluidity of supply chains today or all around the world, that possibility is even greater than it was a decade ago when I was writing that book. I still also believe, and I think it's been proven true, that they still are two nations indivisible, that you can't divorce one from the other. That the issues that we have here challenge Mexico, or have consequences for Mexico and vice versa.

 

But I am worried that we now have in Mexico a government that isn't all that interested in ties to the United States, and that will be in the end to their detriment, but also to ours because you won't have that easy back and forth. And resolving the real challenges that happen when you have two countries together, and I worry that there's many voices within the United States that are less interested in that relationship. And if those become the dominant voices, then the problems between the two nations won't go away, but our ability to solve them in cooperative ways that provide a win for both countries will be extremely lowered.

 

LINDSAY:
On that note, I'll close up The President's Inbox for this week. My guest has been Shannon O'Neill, the Vice President of Studies and the Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin-America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of the new book, the Globalization Myth: Why Regions Matter, which Shannon was kind enough to come on the President's Inbox last October to discuss at greater length and I recommended to you. Shannon, as always, a delight to chat.

 

O'NEIL:
Thanks so much for having me.

 

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen and leave us review, we love the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode and a transcript of our conversation are available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on cfr.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox, or solely those as the host or our guests and not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

 

Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang, the Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Michelle Kurilla for her assistance. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.