The American presidential elections, which took place in November 2016, represent the most awaited political event of the year by experts, media professionals and the general public. This is true not only because the contest between Hillary R. Clinton and Donald J. Trump spawned several controversies throughout the campaign, but also for the fact that the presidential election cycle in the United States brings to the spotlight disputes between programs whose reach is global, due to the military, economic, demographic and territorial power of the United States.
This issue of Panorama Internacional discusses some of the main structural and conjunctural aspects regarding the United States and its presidential elections. Topics such as the functional distribution of income, the monetary policy, the political and electoral system and the strategic reorientation of the American foreign policy have been analyzed so that the reader can familiarize himself/herself with issues that indicate which paths will be taken by the country in the years to come. Naturally, it is not our aim to exhaust the debate over these issues, but to provide means for the comprehension of trends regarding politics, economics and international relations.
After reading this issue, we hope the reader will be aware of the most important dilemmas that the United States is facing today regarding its strategic goals, its economy and its political system. We understand that the country has been going through structural changes in the past decades, which puts it in a situation of intense political polarization and acute social conflicts. In 2016, this situation was translated into a distinct electoral campaign — compared to previous ones — as candidates such as Donald J. Trump and Bernie Sanders, who were not related to the political establishment, had unexpected results in the primaries.
It is our understanding that the surprises during the primaries reflect a change that has been taking place for decades: the functional distribution of income. In Alessandro Miebach and Augusto P. de Bem’s article, we can see that, since the 1980s, social inequalities have not only ceased their descendant trajectory, but they have also started a process of systematic growth, which is reflected by the Gini coefficient.
At first, the association between the increase of social inequalities and the advance of non-traditional candidacies may seem blurry and many political analyses do not consider this aspect, but we firmly believe that these facts are inseparable. That is due to the fact that there is a growing feeling among many social layers in the U.S. that the American political system is ruined, for it only serves the wealthier. In this context, the frustration falls into two completely opposite perspectives: on the one hand, there are those who favor structural reforms, raising taxes for the rich, strengthening public services and ending corporate campaign financing; on the other hand, there are those who defend tougher legislation to tackle criminality, stricter immigration laws and the repeal of measures that were created to protect social, ethnic and gender minorities.
Next, André Scherer presents his article about the recent and possible future behavior of the Federal Reserve (Fed), responsible for moderating long-term interest rates in the U.S. As already shown by Miebach and de Bem, the financialization of the capitalist system has spawned structural changes in market economies, creating a scenario in which all the decisions by the Fed have worldwide repercussions. In that sense, the author argues that, even though the expansionary monetary policy that characterized the post-crisis period is no longer in effect, the expectations of a sudden rise in interest rates have not been confirmed. Although there has been a 0.25 percentage point increase at the end of 2015, some predicted three other rises for this year, which has proven wrong, and there are those who say that interest rates will remain untouched until the end of 2016. According to Scherer, this frustration is mostly due to the realization that the recovery of the American economy has been slow, and that the creation of jobs in the past months does not seem to show a surge in industrial investment.
After the analysis of economic topics, Augusto N. de Oliveira dissects the electoral system in the U.S., clarifying how presidents are selected in the country and explaining their prerogatives and duties. In his article, Oliveira shows how much the political and electoral process has changed in America since the first presidential election took place in 1788. Generally speaking, it is possible to highlight two parallel phenomena: insofar as the president has started taking over responsibilities which were not assigned by the Constitution, the electoral process has changed too, with the establishment of political parties and shifts in the Electoral College. Nowadays, however, the system has been heavily criticized, for states are entitled to determine the congressional districts, and they sometimes do that in order to benefit a particular party. Moreover, many states are also creating rules to restrict voting by minorities.
At last, Bruno M. Jubran evaluates the American foreign policy, assessing its geopolitical reorientation during Obama’s term. In mid-2011, while the last American troops were being withdrawn from Iraq, Obama announced the ‘Pivot to Asia’: after decades considering the Middle East its strategic priority, the United States would henceforth focus its international agenda on the Asia-Pacific region. That goal, released in an article signed by Hillary R. Clinton, indicated that the U.S. would expand its activities in that region by military, political and economic means, trying to attract these countries even more to its sphere of influence. Outspokenly, the government recognized that its foreign policy would be based upon containing China’s rise, in order to reassure America’s dominance in the 21th century.
The interviewee of the current issue is Cristina S. Pecequilo, PhD in Political Science from the University of São Paulo (USP), Associate Professor of International Relations at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) and at the Graduate Program in International Relations San Tiago Dantas, Associate Researcher at the Brazilian Center of Strategy and International Relations (Nerint), of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), and at a joint Study Group between Unifesp and the Federal University of ABC (UFABC). Pecequilo develops research on American foreign policy, among other topics.
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