COMMENTARY / Rafael Calduch Torres*.

As tradition dictates since 1845, on the first Tuesday of November, the 3rd, the eligible voters of the fifty states that make up the United States will take part in the fifty-ninth Election Day, the day on which the high school Electoral, which will have to choose between keeping the forty-fifth President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, or electing the forty-sixth, Joe Biden.

But the real problem facing not only the inhabitants of the US, but also the rest of the world's population, is that both Trump and Biden are setting out their international strategy at core topic domestically, following in the wake of the change that took place in the country following the 9/11 attacks and whose fundamental result has been the absence of effective leadership of the American superpower over the last twenty years. For if there is one thing that must be clear to us, it is the fact that none of the candidates, like their predecessors, has a plan to restore the international leadership that the United States enjoyed until the end of the 1990s; On the contrary, what they are urged to do is to solve domestic problems and subordinate international issues, which a superpower of the stature of the US must face, to the solutions adopted domestically. This is one of the serious strategic errors of our era, since strong international leaderships that are coherent with the management of domestic problems have historically allowed the creation of points of meeting in US society that cushion divisions and bring the country together.

However, despite these broad similarities, there is a clear difference between the two candidates in their approach to international issues that will affect the outcome of the choice Americans will make on Tuesday.

"The Power of America's example. With this slogan, Biden's general proposal , much clearer and more accessible than Trump's, develops a plan to lead the democratic world in the 21st century based on using the way in which America's domestic problems will be solved as an example, binding and sustaining its international leadership; it goes without saying that the mere assumption that America's domestic problems are not exactly extrapolable to the rest of the international actors is not even taken into account.

Thus, the Democratic candidate , using a fairly traditional rhetoric on the dignity of leadership, uses the connection between domestic and international reality to propose a programme of national regeneration without specifying how this will succeed in re-establishing the lost international leadership. This approach will be based on two main pillars: the democratic regeneration of the country and the reconstruction of the US class average which, in turn, will underpin other international projects.

Democratic regeneration will be based on strengthening the educational and judicial systems, transparency, the fight against corruption and an end to attacks on the media, and is seen as the instrument for restoring the country's moral leadership, which, in addition to inspiring others, would serve for the US to transfer these US domestic policies to the international arena, for others to follow and imitate through a sort of global league for democracy that seems very nebulous to us.

Meanwhile, the reconstruction of the class average , the same one Trump appealed to four years ago, would involve greater investment in technological innovation and supposedly greater global equity in international trade, from which the United States would benefit the most.

Finally, all of the above would be complemented by a new era in international arms control through a new START treaty between the US and Russia, US leadership in the fight against climate change, an end to interventions on foreign soil, particularly in Afghanistan, and the re-establishment of diplomacy as the backbone of US foreign policy.

"Promises Made, Promises Kept!What is Trump's alternative? The current President does not reveal what his projects are, but he does propose a review of his "achievements" which, we understand, will give us an idea of what his foreign policy will be, which will revolve around the continuity of the US trade rebalancing based, as until now, on shielding US companies from foreign investment, the imposition of new tariffs, the fight against fraudulent trade practices, especially on the part of China, and the restoration of US relations with its allies in Asia/Pacific, the Middle East and Europe, but without specific proposals.

With regard to security, which Trump treats differently, the recipe is increased defence spending, the shielding of US territory against terrorism and opposition to North Korea, Venezuela and Iran, to which will be added the maintenance and expansion of the recent campaign of actions directed specifically against Russia, with the declared goal to contain it in Ukraine and to prevent cyber-attacks.

But the reality is that both candidates will have to face global challenges that they have not considered in their programmes and that will decisively condition their mandates, starting with the management of the pandemic and its economic effects on a global scale and including the growing competition from the European Union, especially as its common military and defence capabilities develop.

As we have just seen, none of the candidates will offer new solutions and therefore the situation is unlikely to improve, at least in the short term deadline.

* PhD in Contemporary History. graduate in Political Science and Administration. Lecturer at the UNAV and the UCJC.

[Bruno Maçães, History Has Begun. The Birth of a New America. Hurst and Co. London, 2020. 203 p.]

review / Emili J. Blasco

What if the United States were not in decline, but quite the opposite? The United States could actually be in its infancy as a great power. This is what Bruno Maçães argues in his new book, whose degree scroll -History Has Begun- In a certain sense, he refutes Fukuyama's end of history, which saw the democratisation of the world at the end of the 20th century as the culmination of the West. Precisely, the hypothesis of the Portuguese-born internationalist is that the US is developing its own original civilisation, separate from what until now has been understood as Western civilisation, in a world in which the very concept of the West is losing strength.

Maçães' work follows three lines of attention: the progressive separation of the US from Europe, the characteristics that identify the specific American civilisation, and the struggle between the US and China for the new world order. The author had already developed aspects of these themes in his two immediately preceding works, already reviewed here: The Dawn of Eurasia y Belt and RoadThe focus is now on the US. The three titles are basically a sequence: the progressive dissolution of the European peninsula into the Eurasian continent as a whole, the emergence of China as the superpower of this great continental mass, and Washington's remaining role on the planet.

As to whether the US is rising or not leave, Maçães writes in the book's introduction: "Conventional wisdom suggests that the United States has already reached its peak. But what if it is only now beginning to forge its own path forward? The volume is written before the coronavirus crisis and the deep unease in US society today, but even before that some signs of US domestic unrest, such as political polarisation or divergences over the direction of its foreign policy, were already evident. "The present moment in the history of the United States is both a moment of destruction and a moment of creation", says Maçães, who considers that the country is going through "convulsions" characteristic of this process of destructive creation. In his opinion, in any case, they are "the birth pangs of a new culture rather than the death throes of an old civilisation".

One might think that the United States is simply evolving towards a mixed culture as a result of globalisation, so that the influence of some European countries in shaping US society over the last few centuries is now being joined by Asian immigration. Indeed, by mid-century, immigrants from across the Pacific are expected to outnumber those arriving from Mexico and Central America, which, although steeped in indigenous cultures, largely follow the Western paradigm. Between the first European and the new Asian heritage, a 'hybrid Eurasian' culture could develop in the US.

Indeed, at one point in the book, Maçães asserts that the US is 'no longer a European nation', but 'in fundamental respects now seems more similar to countries like India or Russia or even the Republic of Iran'. However, he disagrees with this hybrid Eurasian perspective and argues instead for the development of a new, indigenous American society, separate from modern Western civilisation, rooted in new sentiments and thoughts.

In describing this different way of being, Maçães focuses on a few manifestations, from which he deduces deeper aspects. "Why do Americans speak so loudly?" he asks, referring to one such symptom. His theory is that American life emphasises its own artificiality as a way of reminding its participants that they are, at bottom, experiencing a story. "The American way of life is consciously about language, storytelling, plot and form, and is meant to draw attention to its status as fiction." An entire chapter, for example, is devoted to analysing the importance of television in the US. In the midst of these considerations, the reader might think that the reasoning has been drifting towards a cultural essay and out of the realm of International Office, but in the conclusion of the book the ends are conveniently tied up.

With that loose end out of the way, the book moves on to analyse the tug of war between Washington and Beijing. It recalls that since its rise as a world power around 1900, the US's permanent strategic goal has been to prevent a single power from controlling the whole of Eurasia. Previous threats in this regard were Germany and the USSR, and today it is China. employee Normally, Washington would resort to a balance of power, using Europe, Russia and India against China (using a game historically played by Britain for the goal to prevent a single country from controlling the European continent), but for the moment the US has focused on directly confronting China. Maçães sees the Trump administration's policy as confusing. "If the US wants to adopt a strategy of maximum pressure against Beijing, it needs to be clearer about the end game": is it to constrain Chinese economic power or to convert China to the West's model ?, he asks. He intuits that the ultimate goal is to "decouple" the Western world from China, creating two separate economic spheres.

Maçães believes that China will hardly manage to dominate the supercontinent, since "the unification of the whole of Eurasia under a single power is so far from inevitable that in fact it has never been achieved". In any case, he believes that, because of its interest as a superpower, the US may end up playing not so much the role of "great balancer" (given China's weight, it is difficult for any of its neighbours to exercise a counterweight) as that of "great creator" of the new order. "China must be trimmed down in size and other pieces must be accumulated, if a balance is to be the final product," he asserts.

It is here that the US character as a story and narrative builder finally comes back into the picture, with a somewhat flimsy argument. Maçães can see the US succeeding in this task of "great maker" if it treats its allies with autonomy. As in a novel, his role as narrator "is to bring all the characters together and preserve their own individual spheres"; "the narrator has learned not to impose a single truth on the whole, and at the same time no character will be allowed to replace him". "For the United States," Maçães concludes, "the age of nation-building is over. The age of world building has begun".

▲ Crossroads in Minneapolis where George Floyd was stopped by local police [Fibonacci Blue].

COMMENTARY / Salvador Sánchez Tapia [Brigadier General (Res.)].

In a controversial public statement on 2 June, US President Donald Trump threatened to deploy armed forces units to contain riots sparked by the death of African-American George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in Minnesota, and to maintain law and order if they escalate in violence.

Regardless of the seriousness of the event, and beyond the fact that the incident has been politicised and is being employee used as a platform for expressing rejection of Trump's presidency, the possibility raised by the president poses an almost unprecedented challenge to civil-military relations in the United States.

For reasons rooted in its pre-independence past, the United States maintains a certain caution against the possibility that armed forces can be used domestically against citizens by whoever holds power. For this reason, when the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution, while authorising the congress to organise and maintain armies, they explicitly limited their funding to a maximum of two years.

Against this backdrop, and against the background of the tension between the Federation and the states, American legislation has tried to limit the employment of the Armed Forces in domestic tasks. Thus, since 1878, the Posse Comitatus Since 1878, for example, the Armed Forces Act has limited the possibility of using them to carry out law and order missions that the states, including the National Guard, are responsible for carrying out with their own resources.

One of the exceptions to this rule is the Insurrection Act of 1807, invoked precisely by President Trump as an argument in favour of the legality of a possible decision by employment. This is despite the fact that this law is restrictive in spirit, as it requires the cooperation of the states in its application, and because it is designed for extreme cases in which the states are unable, or unwilling, to maintain order, circumstances that do not seem applicable to the case at hand.

The controversial nature of advertisement is attested to by the fact that voices as authoritative and so little inclined to publicly break its neutrality as that of Lieutenant General (ret.) James Mattis, Secretary of Defence of the Trump Administration until his premature removal in December 2018, or Lieutenant General (ret.) Martin Dempsey, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff between 2011 and 2015, have spoken out against it. ) Martin Dempsey, head of the board Chiefs of Staff between 2011 and 2015, have spoken out against this employment, joining the statements made by former presidents as disparate as George W. Bush and Barack Obama, or those of the Secretary of Defence himself, Mark Esper, whose position against the possibility of using the Armed Forces in this status has recently been made clear.

The presidential advertisement has opened up a crisis in the usually stable US civil-military relations (CMR). Beyond the scope of the United States, the profound question, which affects the very core of CMR in a democratic state, is none other than whether or not it is appropriate to use the armed forces in public order or, in a broader sense, domestic tasks, and the risks associated with such a decision.

In the 1990s, Michael C. Desch, one of the leading authorities in the field of CMR, identified the correlation between the missions entrusted to the armed forces by a state and the quality of its civil-military relations, concluding that foreign-oriented military missions are the most conducive to healthy CMR, while non-military domestic missions are likely to generate various CMR pathologies.

Generally speaking, the existence of armed forces in any state is primarily motivated by the need to protect the state against any threat from outside. employment In order to carry out such a high task with guarantees, armies are equipped and trained for the lethal use of force, unlike police forces, which are equipped and trained for a minimal and gradual use of force, which only becomes lethal in the most extreme, exceptional cases. In the first case, it is a matter of confronting an armed enemy intent on destroying one's own forces. In the second, force is used to confront citizens who may, in some cases, use violence, but who remain, after all, compatriots.

When military forces are employed in tasks of this nature, there is always a risk that they will produce a response in accordance with their training, which may be excessive in a law and order scenario. The consequences, in such a case, can be very negative. In the worst case, and above all other considerations, the employment may result in a perhaps avoidable loss of life. Moreover, from the CMR's point of view, the soldiers that the nation submission has for its external defence could become, in the eyes of the public, the enemies of those they are supposed to defend.

The damage this can do to civil-military relations, to national defence and to the quality of a state's democracy is difficult to measure, but it can be intuited if one considers that, in a democratic system, the armed forces cannot live without the support of their fellow citizens, who see them as a beneficial force for the nation and to whose members they extend their recognition as its loyal and selfless servants.

The abuse of employment of the armed forces in domestic tasks can also deteriorate their already complex preparation, weakening them for the execution of the missions for which they were conceived. It may also end up conditioning their organisation and equipment to the detriment, once again, of their essential tasks.

On the other hand, and although today we are far from such a scenario, this employment could gradually lead to a progressive expansion of the tasks of the Armed Forces, which would extend their control over purely civilian activities and see their range of tasks increasingly broadened, displacing other agencies in their execution, which could, undesirably, atrophy.

In such a scenario, the military institution could cease to be perceived as a disinterested actor and come to be seen as a competitor with particular interests, and with a capacity for control that it could use to its own advantage, even if this were at odds with the nation's interest. Such a status would, over time, lead hand in hand to the politicisation of the armed forces, from which would follow another damage to WRCs that is difficult to quantify.

Decisions such as President Trump's may ultimately place members of the armed forces in the grave moral dilemma of using force against their fellow citizens, or disobeying the president's orders. Because of its seriousness, therefore, the decision to commit the armed forces to such tasks should be taken exceptionally and after careful consideration.

It is difficult to determine whether President Trump's advertisement was merely a product of his temperament or whether, on the contrary, it contained a real intention to use the armed forces in the unrest sweeping the country, in a decision that has not occurred since 1992. In any case, the President, and those advising him, must assess the damage that could be done to civil-military relations and, therefore, to the American democratic system. This is without forgetting, moreover, the responsibility that rests on America's shoulders in the face of the reality that a part of humanity looks to the country as a reference letter and model to imitate.

[Joseph S. Nye. Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump. Oxford University Press. New York, 2020. 254 pp.]

review / Emili J. Blasco

The question that serves as degree scroll for the new book by Jospeh Nye, known to the public at large for having coined the term "the question of the future". soft powerThe author's argument is not so much a concession to secularist thinking as a lack of boldness in asserting from entrance the desirability of ethical reflection in foreign policy decisions, an importance that, despite the question mark, one senses is defended by the author.

In fact, the question itself is a question core topic at discipline of International Office. A common approach is to see the world scenario as a conjunction of competing states, in an anarchic dynamic where the law of the strongest prevails. Internally, the state can be driven by criteria of the common good, addressing the different needs of its inhabitants and making decisions at the national or local level through democratic processes. But beyond one's own borders, does the legitimacy granted by one's own electorate not require the ruler above all to guarantee the security of his citizens against external threats and to safeguard the national interest against that of other states?

The fact that the state is the basic subject in the International Office of course marks a dividing line between the two spheres. And so the question of whether the ethical discernment that is demanded of the mandatary in the internal sphere should also be demanded of him in the external sphere is fully relevant.

Only from extreme positions that consider the state to be a wolf for the state, applying the Hobbesian principle to international order (disorder) (and here there would be no supra-state to discipline this tendency of the state-individual), can it be argued that amorality rules all against all. On a lower rung is so-called offensive realism, and on a lower rung, defensive realism.

Nye, a scholar of International Office, believes that realist theory is a good starting point for any president when it comes to defining a country's foreign policy, given that he must be guided especially by the ethics of responsibility, as he fulfils a 'fiduciary role'. "A president's first moral duty is that of a trustee, and this begins with ensuring the survival and security of the democracy that elected him. But from here it should also be explored what possibilities exist for partnership and international mutual benefit, not closing the door on entrance to approaches of liberalism or cosmopolitanism.

"When survival is at stake, realism is a necessary but not sufficient basis for a moral foreign policy," says Nye, for whom it is a "question of Degree". "Given that there is never perfect security, the moral question is what Degree security should be assured before other values such as welfare, identity or rights are part of a president's foreign policy". He adds: "Many of the most difficult moral decisions are not all-or-nothing [...] The difficult moral decisions are in the middle. While it is important to be cautious about the dangers of a slippery slope, moral decisions rest on matching ends and means with each other'. He concludes that "the maintenance of international institutions and regimes is part of moral leadership".

From the very beginning of the book, Nye uses the three conditions that have traditionally been used in moral treatises to judge an action as ethically good: that the intention, the means and the consequences are good at the same time.

Using these three yardsticks, the author analyses the foreign policy of each of the US presidents since World War II and establishes a final ranking that combines both the morality of their actions on the international stage and the effectiveness of their policy (because an ethical foreign policy can be the case, but one that does little to further a country's national interests).

Thus, of the fourteen presidents, he considers that the four with the best grade in that combination are Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Bush I. In the middle he places Reagan, Kennedy, Ford, Carter, Clinton and Obama. And as the four worst he lists Johnson, Nixon, Bush II and ("tentatively incomplete") Trump. Having done the ranking, Nye warns that he may have given precedence to the Democratic administrations he worked for.

The book is a quick overview of the foreign policy of each presidency, highlighting the presidents' doctrines, their successes and failures (as well as examining the ethical component), so it is also interesting as a succinct history of the US International Office of the last eighty years.

The aspect of morality perhaps lacks a more academic foundation, as it is an discipline especially studied since the scholastic era. But Nye's purpose was not intended to delve into this subject, but to offer a brief study of applied morality.

Reading Nye is always thought-provoking. Among his other reflections might be the idea of the new prospects that would have opened up for the world if particularly propitious times had coincided in the calendar. In particular, he suggests that if Brezhnev and his gerontocratic generation had left earlier and the USSR had been beset by severe economic problems earlier, Gorbachev might have come to power at the same time as Carter's presidency; what they would have achieved together is, however, a matter for speculation.

[George Friedman. The Storm Before the Calm. America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond. Doubleday. New York, 2020. 235 pp.]

review / E. Villa Corta, E. J. Blasco

The degree scroll of the new book by George Friedman, the driving force behind the geopolitical analysis and intelligence agency Stratfor and later creator of Geopolitical Futures, does not refer reference letter to the global crisis created by the Covid-19 pandemic. When he speaks of the crises of the 2020s, which Friedman has been anticipating for some time in his commentaries and now explains at length in this book, he is referring to deep and long-lasting historical movements, in this case confined to the United States.

Beyond the current pandemic, therefore, which is somewhat circumstantial and not addressed in the text (its composition is previous), Friedman predicts that the US will reinvent itself at the end of this decade. Like a machine that, almost automatically, incorporates substantial changes and corrections every certain period of time, the US is preparing for a new leap. There will be a prolonged crisis, but the US will emerge triumphant, Friedman predicts. US decline? Quite the opposite.

Unlike Friedman's previous books, such as The Next Hundred Years or Flashpoints, this time Friedman moves away from Friedman's global geopolitical analysis to focus on the US. In his reflection on American history, Friedman sees a succession of cycles of roughly equal length. The current ones are already in their final stages, and the reinstatement of both will coincide in the late 2020s, in a process of crisis and subsequent resurgence of the country. In the institutional field, the 80-year cycle that began after the end of World War II is coming to an end (the previous one had lasted since the end of the Civil War in 1865); in the socio-economic field, the 50-year cycle that began with Ronald Reagan in 1980 is coming to an end (the previous one had lasted since the end of the Great Recession and the arrival of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House).

Friedman does not see Donald Trump as the catalyst for change (his effort has simply been to recover the status created by Reagan for the class average working class, affected by unemployment and loss of purchasing power), nor does he believe that whoever replaces him in the coming years will be the catalyst. Rather, he places the turnaround around 2028. The change, which is taking place in a time of great turmoil, will have to do with the end of the technocracy that dominates American political and institutional life and with the creative disruption of new technologies. The author wants to denote the US's skill ability to overcome adversity and take advantage of "chaos" in order to achieve fruitful growth.

Friedman divides the book into three parts: the creation of the nation as we know it, the cycles we have gone through, and the prognosis for the one to come. In this last part he presents the challenges or adversities that the country will have to face.

As for the creation of the country, the author reasons about the subject government created in the United States, the territory in which the country is located and the American people. This last aspect is perhaps the most interesting. He defines the American people as a purely artificial construct. This leads him to see the US as a machine that automatically fine-tunes its functioning from time to time. As an "invented" country, the US reinvents itself when its cycles run out of steam.

Friedman presents the training of the American people through three overlapping types: the cowboy, the inventor and the warrior. To the cowboy, who seeks to start something completely new and in an "American" way, we owe especially America's unique social construct. To the inventor belongs the drive for technological progress and economic prosperity. And the warrior condition has been present from the beginning.

The second part of the book deals with the aforementioned question of cycles. Friedman considers that US growth has been cyclical, a process in which the country reinvents itself from time to time in order to continue progressing. After reviewing the periods so far, he locates the next big change in the US in the decade that has just begun. He warns that the gestation of the next stage will be complicated by the accumulation of events from past cycles. One of the issues that the country will have to resolve concerns the paradox between the desire to internationalise democracy and human rights and that of maintaining its national security: "liberating the world" or securing its position in the international sphere.

The present moment of change, in which agreement with the author the institutional and the socio-economic cycle will collide, is a time of deep crisis, but will be followed by a long period of calm. Friedman believes that the first "tremors" of the crisis were felt in the 2016 elections, which showed a radical polarisation of US society. The country will have to reform not only its complex institutional system, but also various socio-economic aspects.

This last part of the book - devoted to solving problems such as the student debt crisis, the use of social networks, new social constructions or the difficulty in the sector educational- is probably the most important. If the mechanicity and automatism in the succession of cycles determined by Friedman, or even their very existence, are questionable (other analyses could lead other authors to consider different stages), the real problems that the country is currently facing are easily observable. So the presentation of proposals for their resolution is of undoubted value.

The Trump Administration's Newest Migration Policies and Shifting Immigrant Demographics in the USA

New Trump administration migration policies including the "Safe Third Country" agreements signed by the USA, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras have reduced the number of migrants from the Northern Triangle countries at the southwest US border. As a consequence of this phenomenon and other factors, Mexicans have become once again the main national group of people deemed inadmissible for asylum or apprehended by the US Customs and Border Protection.

▲ An US Border Patrol agent at the southwest US border [cbp.gov].

ARTICLE / Alexandria Casarano Christofellis

On March 31, 2018, the Trump administration cut off aid to the Northern Triangle countries in order to coerce them into implementing new policies to curb illegal migration to the United States. El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala all rely heavily on USAid, and had received 118, 181, and 257 million USD in USAid respectively in the 2017 fiscal year.

The US resumed financial aid to the Northern Triangle countries on October 17 of 2019, in the context of the establishment of bilateral negotiations of Safe Third Country agreements with each of the countries, and the implementation of the US Supreme Court's de facto asylum ban on September 11 of 2019. The Safe Third Country agreements will allow the US to 'return' asylum seekers to the countries which they traveled through on their way to the US border (provided that the asylum seekers are not returned to their home countries). The US Supreme Court's asylum ban similarly requires refugees to apply for and be denied asylum in each of the countries which they pass through before arriving at the US border to apply for asylum. This means that Honduran and Salvadoran refugees would need to apply for and be denied asylum in both Guatemala and Mexico before applying for asylum in the US, and Guatemalan refugees would need to apply for and be denied asylum in Mexico before applying for asylum in the US. This also means that refugees fleeing one of the Northern Triangle countries can be returned to another Northern Triangle country suffering many of the same issues they were fleeing in the first place.

Combined with the Trump administration's longer-standing "metering" or "Remain in Mexico" policy (Migrant Protection Protocols/MPP), these political developments serve to effectively "push back" the US border. The "Remain in Mexico" policy requires US asylum seekers from Latin America to remain on the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border to wait their turn to be accepted into US territory. Within the past year, the US government has planted significant obstacles in the way of the path of Central American refugees to US asylum, and for better or worse has shifted the burden of the Central American refugee crisis to Mexico and the Central American countries themselves, which are ill-prepared to handle the influx, even in the light of resumed US foreign aid. The new arrangements resemble the EU's refugee deal with Turkey.

These policy changes are coupled with a shift in US immigration demographics. In August of 2019, Mexico reclaimed its position as the single largest source of unauthorised immigration to the US, having been temporarily surpassed by Guatemala and Honduras in 2018.

US Customs and Border Protection data indicates a net increase of 21% in the number of Unaccompanied Alien Children from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador deemed inadmissible for asylum at the Southwest US Border by the US field office between fiscal year 2019 (through February) and fiscal year 2020 (through February). All other inadmissible groups (Family Units, Single Adults, etc.) experienced a net decrease of 18-24% over the same time period. For both the entirety of fiscal year 2019 and fiscal year 2020 through February, Mexicans accounted for 69 and 61% of Unaccompanied Alien Children Inadmissible at the Southwest US border respectively, whereas previously in fiscal years 2017 and 2018 Mexicans accounted for only 21 and 26% of these same figures, respectively. The percentages of Family Unit Inadmisibles from the Northern Triangle countries have been decreasing since 2018, while the percentage of Family Unit Inadmisibles from Mexico since 2018 has been on the rise.

With asylum made far less accessible to Central Americans in the wake of the Trump administration's new migration policies, the number of Central American inadmisibles is in sharp decline. Conversely, the number of Mexican inadmisibles is on the rise, having nearly tripled over the past three years.

Chain migration factors at play in Mexico may be contributing to this demographic shift. On September 10, 2019, prominent Mexican newspaper El discussion published an article titled "Immigrants Can Avoid Deportation with these Five Documents." Additionally, The Washington Post cites the testimony of a city official from Michoacan, Mexico, claiming that a local Mexican travel company has begun running a weekly "door-to-door" service line to several US border points of entry, and that hundreds of Mexican citizens have been coming to the municipal offices daily requesting documentation to help them apply for asylum in the US. Word of mouth, press coverage like that found in El discussion, and the commercial exploitation of the Mexican migrant situation have perhaps made migration, and especially the claiming of asylum, more accessible to the Mexican population.

US Customs and Border Protection data also indicates that total apprehensions of migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador attempting illegal crossings at the Southwest US border declined 44% for Unaccompanied Alien Children and 73% for Family Units between fiscal year 2019 (through February) and fiscal year 2020 (through February), while increasing for Single Adults by 4%. The same data trends show that while Mexicans have consistently accounted for the overwhelming majority of Single Adult Apprehensions since 2016, Family Unit and Unaccompanied Alien Children Apprehensions until the past year were dominated by Central Americans. However, in fiscal year 2020-February, the percentages of Central American Family Unit and Unaccompanied Alien Children Apprehensions have declined while the Mexican percentage has increased significantly. This could be attributed to the Northern Triangle countries' and especially Mexico's recent crackdown on the flow of illegal immigration within their own states in response to the same US sanctions and suspension of USAid which led to the Safe Third Country bilateral agreements with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

While the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration from the Northern Triangle countries has effectively worked to limit both the legal and illegal access of Central Americans to US entry, the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration from Mexico in the past few years has focused on arresting and deporting illegal Mexican immigrants already living and working within the US borders. Between 2017 and 2018, ICE increased workplace raids to arrest undocumented immigrants by over 400% according to The Independent in the UK. The trend seemed to continue into 2019. President Trump tweeted on June 17, 2019 that "Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they come in." More deportations could be leading to more attempts at reentry, increasing Mexican migration to the US, and more Mexican Single Adult apprehensions at the Southwest border. The Washington Post alleges that the majority of the Mexican single adults apprehended at the border are previous deportees trying to reenter the country.

Lastly, the steadily increasing violence within the state of Mexico should not be overlooked as a cause for continued migration. Within the past year, violence between the various Mexican cartels has intensified, and murder rates have continued to rise. While the increase in violence alone is not intense enough to solely account for the spike that has recently been seen in Mexican migration to the US, internal violence nethertheless remains an important factor in the Mexican migrant situation. Similarly, widespread poverty in Mexico, recently worsened by a decline in foreign investment in the light of threatened tariffs from the USA, also plays a key role.

In conclusion, the Trump administration's new migration policies mark an intensification of long-standing nativist tendencies in the US, and pose a potential threat to the human rights of asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border. The corresponding present demographic shift back to Mexican predominance in US immigration is driven not only by the Trump administration's new migration policies, but also by many other diverse factors within both Mexico and the US, from press coverage to increased deportations to long-standing cartel violence and poverty. In the face of these recent developments, one thing remains clear: the situation south of the Rio Grande is just as complex, nuanced, and constantly evolving as is the situation to the north on Capitol Hill in the USA.

The changes, although significant in some cases, will not substantially alter trade flows between the three countries.

The new Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico is now ready for implementation, following ratification by the congresses of the three countries. The revision of the previous treaty, which came into force in 1994, was called for by Donald Trump on his arrival at the White House, citing the trade deficit generated for the US in relation to Canada and especially Mexico. Although some significant corrections have been introduced, following the main American approaches, it does not seem that the revised agreement will substantially modify trade flows between the three countries.

▲ Presidents Peña Nieto, Trump and Trudeau sign the free trade agreement in November 2019 [US Gov.]

article / Marcelina Kropiwnicka

On 1 January 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) entered into force. More than twenty years later and under the administration of President Donald Trump, the three partner countries opened a review process of agreement, now called the Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico (to which each country has given a different acronym: the Mexicans call it T-MEC or TMEC, the Americans USMCA and the Canadians CUSMA).

The text of the TMEC finally ratified by the three countries is broadly consistent with the old NAFTA. However, there are particular distinctions. Thus, it includes stricter rules of origin in the automotive and textile sectors, an updated labour value content requirement in the automotive sector, increased US access to Canadian supply-managed markets, novel provisions related to financial services, and a specification on the establishment of free trade agreements with non-market economies. The joint goal is to encourage production in North America.

New developments negotiated in 2017-2018

The three parties began negotiations in the summer of 2017 and after just over a year they concluded a agreement, signed by the presidents of the three countries in November 2018. The main novelties introduced until then were the following:

1) The agreement revises the regional value content (RVC) percentage for the automotive industry. Under NAFTA, at least 62.5% of an automobile had to be made from North American parts. The TMEC raises the percentage to 75% with the intention of strengthening the countries' manufacturing capacity and increasing the strength of work in the automotive industry.

2) Along the same lines, to support employment in North America, the agreement contains new trade rules of origin to boost higher wages by mandating that 40-45% of auto manufacturing be done by workers earning at least $16 per hour on average by 2023; that's roughly three times the pay a Mexican worker normally receives today.

3) Apart from the automotive industry, the dairy market will be opened to ensure greater access for US dairy products , a demand core topic for Washington. Currently, Canada has a system of domestic quotas that were put in place to protect its farmers from foreign skill ; however, under the new TMEC agreement , changes will allow the US to export up to 3.6% of Canada's dairymarket ,an increase of 2.6% from the original NAFTA provision. Another achievement core topic for Trump was the negotiation of Canada's elimination of what are known as itsmilk classes 6 and 7.

4) Another new aspect is the sunset clause. NAFTA had an automatic sunset clause or a pre-determined end date for the agreement, which meant that any of the three parties could withdraw from the agreement, after a six-month notice of withdrawal notice ; if this did not occur, the agreement remained indefinite. However, the TMEC foresees a duration of 16 years, with the option to meet, negotiate and revise the document after six years, as well as the possibility to renew the agreement after 16 years.

5) The three-country pact also includes a chapter on work that anchors labour obligations at the core of agreement , making enforcement more demanding.

Reforms in Mexico

Precisely to make that last point more credible, US and Canadian negotiators demanded that Mexico make changes to its labour laws to speed up the process of approval and ratification of the TMEC by lawmakers in Washington and Ottawa. US House leaders had doubted Mexico's ability to comply specifically with the labour rights points of agreement. One of President Trump's main objectives in the renegotiation was to reassure US workers that the status of skill would be overcome.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sent a letter to the US congress guaranteeing the implementation of a four-year plan to ensure the achievement of adequate labour rights. López Obrador committed to an outlay of $900 million over the next four years to change the labour justice system and ensure that disputes between workers and employers are resolved in a timely manner. Mexico has also invested in the construction of a Federal Centre for Labour Conciliation and Registration, where labour disputes will be addressed prior to a court hearing.

Obrador showed his commitment to labour reforms by ensuring at least a 2% increase in theminimum wage in Mexico. Most importantly B is that the requirement for direct voting of union leaders will change the way workers' organisations function. With direct elections, decisions on collective agreements will be more transparent. Mexico's plan to improve the working environment will start in 2020.

What's new in 2019 to facilitate ratification

Faced with demands on the US congress , especially from the Democratic majority, to ratify the treaty, negotiators proceeded with two major revisions to NAFTA. One of them aimed primarily at revising a large number of provisions relating to intellectual property, pharmaceuticals and the digital economy:

6) The intellectual property rights chapter seeks to address US concerns to spur innovation, generate economic growth and support jobs work. For the first time, according to the US Trade Representative, the additions include: strict rules against circumvention of technological protection measures for music, movies and digital books; strong protections for pharmaceutical and agricultural innovation; broad protections against theft of trade secrets; and authority for officials to stop suspected counterfeit or pirated goods from official document .

7) A new chapter on digital trade has also been included that contains stricter controls than any other international agreement , strengthening the foundation for the expansion of trade and investment in areas where the US has a competitive advantage.

8) The final draft removes a 10-year guarantee of intellectual property protection for biological medicines, which are some of the most expensive medicines on the market. It also removes granting an additional three years of IP exclusivity for medicines for which a new use is found.

A second group of last minute changes makes reference letter for greater environmental and labour protections:

9) Environment covers 30 pages, outlining obligations to combat trafficking in wildlife, timber and fish; strengthen law enforcement to stop such trafficking; and address critical environmental issues such as air quality and marine litter. New obligations include: protection of various marine species, implementation of appropriate methods for environmental impact assessments, and alignment with obligations under seven multilateral environmental agreements. In particular, Mexico is agreement to improve surveillance to stop illegal fishing, and the three countries agree to stop subsidize fishing for overfished species. To increase environmental accountability, Democrats in the US House of Representatives called for the creation of an inter-agency oversight committee. However, the treaty does not address climate change issues.

10) To ensure that Mexico delivers on its labour promises, House Democrats forced the creation of an interagency committee to monitor the implementation of Mexico's labour reform and compliance with labour obligations. Despite the new and unique 'LVC' requirement, a labour value content rule, it will still be difficult to impose a minimum wage on Mexican automakers. However, US Democrats hope that the condition will force automakers to buy more supplies from Canada or the US, or cause automakers' wages in Mexico to rise.

The finally ratified agreement will replace the one that has been in force for 25 years. Overall, the move from NAFTA to the TMEC should not have a drastic effect on the three countries. It is a progressive agreement that will entail slight changes: certain industries will be affected, such as the automotive and dairy industries, but only to a small extent. In the long run deadline, given the changes introduced, wages should increase in Mexico, which would reduce Mexican migration to the US. Businesses will be affected in the long run deadline, but with back-up plans and new redesigns, the transition process will hopefully be smooth and mutually beneficial.

[Jim Sciutto, The Shadow War: Inside Russia's and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America. Hasper-Collins. New York, 2019. 308 p.]

review / Álvaro de Lecea

With the end of the Cold War, which pitted the former Soviet Union against the victorious United States of America, the international system shifted from bipolar to a hegemony led by the latter. With the United States in the lead, the West focused on the spread of democracy and commercial globalisation, and if anything the geo-strategic preoccupation of the West was focused on the Al-Qaeda attacks on the Twin Towers on 9/11, so the focus of attention shifted and today's Russia was pushed into the background. However, Russia continued to slowly reconstitute itself in the shadow of its old enemy, which no longer showed much interest. Russia was joined by China, which began to grow by leaps and bounds. At this point, the United States began to realise that it had two major powers on its heels and that it was engaged in a war it did not even know existed: the Shadow War.

This is the term used by Jim Sciutto, CNN's chief national security correspondent, to describe what he describes in detail throughout his book and what has largely come to be known as hybrid or grey zone warfare. Sciutto prefers to speak of Shadow War, which could be translated as war in the shadows, because this better denotes its character of invisibility under the radar of open or conventional warfare.

This new war was started by Russia and China, not as allies, but as powers with a common enemy: the United States. It is a hybrid war subject and therefore contains both military and non-military methods. On the other hand, it does not envisage a direct military confrontation between the two blocs. In The Shadow War: Inside Russia's and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America, Sciutto explains seven situations in which the strategies being pursued by China and Russia to defeat the United States in order to become the world's major powers and impose their own international norms can be clearly observed.

First, it is important to note that Russia and China, while pursuing similar strategies, are different types of adversaries: on the one hand, China is a rising power, while Russia is more of a declining power that is trying to return to its former self. Nevertheless, both share a number of similarities. First, both seek to expand their influence in their own regions. Second, both are suffering from a crisis of legitimacy within their borders. Third, both seek to right the wrongs of history and restore what they perceive as their countries' legitimate positions as world leaders. And finally, they possess great national unity, so that the majority of their populations would do whatever is necessary for their nation.

In the shadow war, thanks to the rules established by Russia and China, any major actor can win, regardless of its power or influence over other international actors. Following the theories of International Office, these rules could be considered to follow a very realistic patron saint , since, in a way, anything goes to win. The power of lies and deception is the order of the day, and lines that were thought unthinkable are crossed. Examples of this, as the book explains and elaborates, are the militarisation of the artificial islands built by China in the South China Sea when Xi Jinping himself had promised not to do so, or the hacking of the Democratic Party's computer system in the 2016 US election campaign by Russian hackers, which may have helped Donald Trump emerge victorious.

To all this must be added an essential part of what is happening in this context of non-traditional warfare: the particularly mistaken idea that the United States has about everything that is happening. To begin with, the first mistake the US made, as Sciutto explains, was to neglect Russia as a relevant focus in the international arena. It believed that, having defeated it in the Cold War, the country would no longer re-emerge as a power, and so failed to see the clear clues that it was slowly growing, led by President Vladimir Putin. Similarly, it failed to understand the Chinese government's true intentions in situations such as the South China Sea or the degree program submarines. All of this can be summed up as the US believing that all international actors would play by the rules established by Washington after the Cold War, without imagining that they would create a new scenario. In conclusion, the US did not understand its opponents.

In his latest chapter, Sciutto makes it clear that the US is currently losing the war. Its biggest mistake was not realising status until it was in front of it and it now finds itself playing on a disadvantaged stage. It is true that the US remains the world leader in many respects, but Russia and China are overtaking it in others, following the new rules they themselves have set. However, a change of attitude in US policies could turn the tide. The author proposes a number of solutions that could help the US get back in the lead.

The solutions he proposes focus, in the first place, on the total knowledge of the enemy and its strategy. This has always been his great disadvantage and would be the first step to begin to control status. Similarly, it recommends greater unity within the Allied bloc, as well as an improvement of its own defences. He also recommends a better understanding of the new scenario in which the whole conflict is taking place, and therefore a series of international treaties regulating these new spaces, such as cyberspace, would be of great help financial aid. Further on, he proposes setting clear limits on enemy actions, raising the costs and consequences of such actions. Finally, it encourages the US to exercise clear leadership.

In conclusion, Sciutto's thesis is that the United States finds itself fighting a war whose existence it has only just discovered. It is a subject war that it is not used to and with a set of rules that are alien to what it preaches. While it is still the leader of the current international system, it finds itself losing the game because China and Russia have been able to discover its rival's weaknesses and use them to its advantage. America's biggest mistake was to ignore all the signs of this shadow war and do nothing about it. New scenarios have been introduced and the rules of the game have been changed, so the US, if it wants to turn status around and once again emerge as the victor, the author argues, will have to unite more than ever internally as a nation and strengthen its alliances, and know its enemies and their intentions better than ever before.

In terms of a evaluation of the book, it can be said that it succeeds in concisely and clearly conveying the most relevant points of this new contest. It manages to make clear the strengths and weaknesses of each actor and to take stock of the current status . However, the author does not manage to be too goal judgemental. While admitting the failings of the US, he gives a negative picture of its rivals, taking for granted who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Objectivity is lacking in some cases, as the good guys are not always so good and the bad guys are not always so bad. That said, Sciutto provides a great analysis of the current international status in which the world's major powers find themselves.

[Eric Rutkow, The Longest Line on the Map: The United States, the Pan-American Highway and the Quest to Link the Americas. Scribner. New York, 2019. 438 p.]

REVIEW / Marcelina Kropiwnicka

Though the title tries to convince the reader that they will merely be exploring the build-up to the largest link between the United States of America and its southern neighbours, The Longest Line on the Map: The United States, the Pan-American Highway and the Quest to Link the Americas covers much more. The book is written in more of a novel-fashion than a textbook-fashion. Author Eric Rutkow, rather than simply discussing the nitty-gritty development of the highway alone, is able to cover historical events from political battles in the homeland of the US to economic hardships encountered among the partner countries. Divided into three main blocks, the book chronologically introduces the events that took place during the Pan-American Highway's construction, beginning with the dream that a railway would connect the two hemispheres.

With the New World just barely beginning to grasp its potential, writer Hinton Rowan Helper's first-hand experience of traveling from the United States to Argentina in the mid-1800s made him come to the realization that there must be an alternative method of traveling between the two countries. After enduring the long voyage, he came to the conclusion, "Why not by rail?" The first quarter of the book hence explains the early attempts made towards linking the wide span between North America and Southern Argentina through the use of a railroad. Thus, when in 1890 the Intercontinental Railway Commission was created, the idea of a Pan-American railway began to flourish and preliminary work began.

The idea was passed on from one indefatigable supporter to another, keeping in mind the cooperative aim of pan-Americanism and the potential for US economic expansion. Yet still by the early 1900s, over half of the projected length of the railway remained unassembled. Despite multiple attempts and investment in building and rebuilding the rail (mainly due to logistical purposes), the project came to a final halt with the realisation that the Pan-American Railway was beginning to look like what it was: an unfeasible dream. President Theodore Roosevelt had concluded similarly in 1905, when he gave preference to developing the Panama Canal, regulating the rules of the railway and building the US Navy. In the subsequent and comparatively short chapter of the book, Rutkow introduces the era when automobiles and bicycles were on the rise, causing a demand for the increased construction of roads and exhaustive efforts to build decent thoroughfare within the US. Also made note of in the book was the diverging attention from the rail as a result of the outbreak of the First World War. These events combined would ultimately cease continuation of the railway's assembly.

The second half of the book is dedicated to the continuation of the dream of connecting the two spheres using a different method: the building of the Pan-American Highway. Although only a sister to the railway project, the two ideas arise from the same ideal. The new project seemed especially tangible due to the growth of the 'motoring generation' and the strengthened advocacy of Pan-Americanism. The belief was that the highway would foster "closer and more harmonious relations" among the nations in the Americas. Nevertheless, the highway remains unfinished due to a mere 50-mile wide gap, known as the Darien Gap, located between Panama and Colombia ("mere" considering the highway today stretches more than 20,000 miles, connecting Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina).

The most engaging part of the book emerges in the last chapter, when Rutkow attempts at connecting the missing link between the two worlds, but isn't able to, which reminds us that the road remains unfinished. The chapter, which is committed to the Darien Gap, is able to give light to the idea that once, the two spheres had a dream of connecting, contrasting to what we see today with the pressure of erecting walls along the southern US border. Though the dream continues to overcome the gap and finish the road, a new challenge had finally emerged: Panama had changed its policy and refused to finish the pavement.

As for such a well-researched book of one of the largest projects on the American continent, there's a peculiar laxity: the coverage on South America is far less complete in comparison to all the focus that the United States' government efforts to organizing and funding the link received. In terms of critiquing the book as a literary piece, not every quotation within the book would be considered absolutely necessary to telling the story. Ironically there's a certain scarcity when it comes to describing the road itself or its surrounding environment. Perhaps the author makes up for this blunder with his meticulous choosing of maps and images to provide the reader with a context of the environment and era in which the dream was being pursued.

For decades, the U.S. closed its doors to Mexican avocados; Today it needs it to meet its growing demand

2019 will see record imports of Mexican avocados into the United States: almost 90% of the one million tons of avocados consumed by Americans will come from the neighboring country, which leads the world in production. After being banned for decades in the U.S. – alleging phytosanitary issues, especially invoked by California producers – the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement opened the doors of the U.S. market to this Mexican product, first with reservations and since 2007 without restrictions. The arrival of Trump to the presidency marked a decline in imports, but since then they have not stopped rising.

▲ Interest in healthy food has led to an increase in avocado consumption around the world

article / Silvia Goya

Social trends such as veganism or "real fooding" have increased the global production of avocados, a fruit valued for its healthy fat and vitamin content, which enlivens a multitude of dishes. In the United States, moreover, the food tradition of millions of Hispanics – the avocado is born from a tree native to Central and South America (Persea americana) – has encouraged the consumption of a product that, like few others, marks relations between the United States and Mexico.

The department The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) predicts that in order to meet the growing national consumption of avocados (which has multiplied by 5.4 since 2000, from 226,000 tons to 1.2 million in 2018), in 2019 the country will have to increase its imports significantly, so that they will constitute 87% to 93% of the country's economy. availability of product. This will mean an increase in imports from Mexico, which in 2018 already contributed 87% of avocados from abroad. This need for imports is due in part to production problems in California, the state with the highest production in the US (around 80%), well ahead of the second, Florida, and a major litigator in the past to prevent the production of the skill of the Mexican avocado.

Donald Trump's first year in the White House saw a slight decrease in Mexican avocado imports, which in 2017 fell to 774,626 tons. However, in 2018 a new record was reached, with 904,205 tons, with an increase of 17%, in a context of non-materialization of the trade threats launched by the Trump Administration, which finally agreed to the renewal of the free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. Last year, imports from Mexico accounted for 87% of total avocado purchases abroad; the rest, up to 1.04 million tonnes, corresponded to those from Peru (8%), Chile (2.5%) and the Dominican Republic (2.5%).

History of a veto

The B The rise in avocado sales in the U.S. has attracted the attention of drug cartels, which have clashed to control the business in some Mexican states such as Michoacán – the major producer of avocados, especially of the Hass variety, which is the most commercialized – giving rise to a "new drug trafficking." However, the history of controversy between the two countries over this berry goes back a long way. It was in 1914 that the then U.S. Secretary of Agriculture signed a notice A quarantine decree declaring the need to ban the import of avocado seeds from Mexico due to a weevil that the seed carried. In 1919 the "Quarantine of Nurseries, Plants and Seeds" was enacted. That framework was in place for decades.

During the 1970s, the discussion of the entrance of Mexican avocados in the U.S. market remained in the political spotlight due to the insistence of officials from Mexico's Plant Health Service. Investigations in several Mexican avocado-producing states, however, found weevils in some of the seeds, which did not allow the regulatory policy of the Animal and Plant Inspection Service (APHIS) to be changed. department U.S. Department of Agriculture. For this reason, in 1976 the USDA, in a letter addressed to its Mexican counterpart, stated that it should continue "as in the past, against the issuance of permits for the importation of avocados from Mexico."

Following these events, U.S. policy on avocados from neighboring China remained restrictive until trade liberalization and harmonization of sanitary and phytosanitary measures began to change the context in which governments examined plant health and import issues. For most of the twentieth century, the policy of protection had been to deny access to products that could harbor pests; In the last decade, however, the rules began to change.

The creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 and the World Trade Organization in 1995 paved the way for new Mexican requests for access to the U.S. avocado market. Although the goal One of the main aspects of NAFTA was the elimination of tariffs by 2004, and it also provided for the harmonization of sanitary and phytosanitary measures among trading partners. Nonetheless, this free trade agreement explicitly recognizes that each country can establish regulations to protect human, animal, and plant life and health, so when the risk of pest infestation is high, the country has legitimacy to put restrictions on trade.

With the implementation of NAFTA in 1994, the U.S. government came under increased pressure to facilitate the importation of agricultural products from Mexico, including avocados. This led to a shift in USDA's phytosanitary policy toward a new "mitigation or technological solutions" policy. APHIS is the branch of government in charge of implementing the phytosanitary provisions of NAFTA in the case of the United States. This body considered that fruit flies – present in a wide variety of species – could also be found in Mexican avocados, so officials from Mexico's Plant Health Service had the difficult task of proving that this insect was not present in their avocados and that those of the Hass variety were not susceptible to attack by the Mexican fruit fly. Between 1992 and 1994, Mexico submitted two plans for work with their respective investigations. The former was rejected while the latter, despite pressure from the California Avocado Commission (CAC), was accepted.

This second plan called for Mexican avocado access to 19 of the 50 U.S. states during the months of October through February. At the end of June 1995, the USDA issued a proposal of rule which described the conditions under which Hass avocado grown on approved plantations in Michoacán could enter the U.S. It was at the end of 1997 that the USDA published a rule authorizing the importation of these avocados to the United States. This was the first time the USDA used the so-called "approach systems" to manage the risks posed by quarantine pests.

At the end of the second shipping season, in February 1999, Mexico requested the expansion of the programme to increase the issue of U.S. states to which it could export and allow the shipping season to start a month earlier (September) and end a month later (March). In 2001, the USDA met with the Mexican Plant Health Service and agreed to consider expanding the importing states to 31 and import dates from October 15 through April 15. The good relationship established between Presidents George W. Bush and Vicente Fox had a clear influence on this expansive movement.

Imports in tonnes. In 2018, imports of 1.04 million tonnes (87% from Mexico) [source: USDA]

Liberalization

For five years, Mexican avocados had been shipped to the U.S. without detecting a single pest. Although the expansion of Mexican avocado imports seemed inevitable, the CAC filed a lawsuit against the USDA from California, alleging that Mexican avocados did have pests. In response to this, the USDA carried out a research and published in 2003 a draft from "assessment pest risk" which confirmed that Mexican avocados did not carry the fruit fly.

The USDA had shifted from its previous position of domestic protection to a new position that benefited imports. Thus, in 2004 the USDA issued a new rule to expand the import program to all 50 states for 12 months of the year. This rule It envisaged that in California, Florida and Hawaii the importation of avocados would be delayed for up to a year in order to test the effectiveness of the proposed regulations. Therefore, until January 2007, Mexico was not allowed to export avocados to California and Florida; Since then, it has been allowed to export to all states year-round, quickly making the U.S. the world's largest importer of Mexican avocados.

Until 2017, the import of Mexican avocados remained stable; However, as previously indicated, with the arrival of Trump to the White House, relations between the US and Mexico once again faltered around various issues, one of them being the export of food from Mexico to the US, with avocados as an emblematic case. The new U.S. president threatened a 20% tariff on Mexican avocados to finance the wall he intended to build on the border.

In June 2018, Trump again threatened to impose a 25% tariff on avocados, and later in May 2019 threatened to impose a 5% tariff on all goods from Mexico.

In March 2019, when the migratory wave occurred, the US president threatened to close the border with Mexico and consecutively withdrew his decision, however, the simple fact that Trump threatened to close the border has already caused the price of avocados to rise by 34%.

U.S.-Mexican avocado relations remain unstable. Although much progress has been made since the implementation of NAFTA, various interests are still at stake that could lead the US to reduce the import of Mexican avocados. It is difficult for avocados to escape the uncertainty inherent in the bond between the United States and Mexico.