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Optimism about Mexico's political and economic future
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody, Ian Bremmer here. A happy Monday to you and a Quick Take to kick off your week. I'm just back from Mexico, Mexico City myself, and lots of fascinating meetings, lots of takeaways. Thought I would give you some of my sense of what is happening there, Mexico and Mexico's context in the world.
First thing I would say is I come away pretty optimistic about where the country is heading overall, and some of that is the context of Mexico in an environment where China-US relations are getting a lot more challenging. There is some significant national security and strategic decoupling that is happening at the behest of US administration, governors, members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans. And also, there's a lot more uncertainty about doing business in Xi Jinping's China itself, given the rapid and sudden changes on COVID, on how to do business as a technology company, on rules and regulations for the private sector, rule of law and its absence, local competition, you name it. And so, even though I still fairly strongly believe that China's going to become the largest economy in the world by 2030, the idea that US corporations will be able to take as much advantage of that is increasingly uncertain. Almost any business leader you talk to in the United States is saying, "Yeah, China is an important market for us, but we are being more cautious about how much we want to invest there, going forward. At the very least, we're putting a pause on some of the big decisions we're making." And in many cases, they're starting to reduce some of that forward looking exposure.
Who are you going to invest towards if you're not investing in China? Well, Mexico in many ways is the country that stands to benefit the most outside of the United States. And indeed, in every meeting I had in three days in Mexico, I was hearing about near-shoring. It's a kind of awkward term, but basically the idea of multinationals based in the United States, doing a lot more on the ground in Mexico. Mexico's the 15th largest economy in the world. It is a large population, it's quite young, it's hardworking. The demographic's increasingly very attractive and it's strongly integrated into the US economy and supply chains. The fact that Tesla had just announced a $10 billion investment near Monterey while I was there was a big boost, a shot in the arm for the Mexican economy that a lot of people were talking about.
And so as a consequence, I mean, there's no question I meant think back on Lula's days, his first time around as president and how much his popularity was benefited by the fact that the economy was in a commodity super cycle and indeed, led to some 80%, even 90% of times approval ratings. I think that right now, Mexico benefits significantly from right place, right time, given what's happening geopolitically.
Now, looking to Mexico itself, I have to say that I was also surprised that Mexico's CEOs and bankers, who have been enormously negative pre-pandemic about then new President AMLO, and he doesn't like him, he doesn't want to talk to him, he's going to be a disaster, he is going to lead the economy into ruin, this time around, I heard still plenty of criticism, but also a recognition from the CEOs in Mexico and the bankers that, "Well, actually, he's not been as bad as we expected." What do you mean by that? Well, he hasn't actually raised taxes, he hasn't spent money on the fiscal balance that the government doesn't have. In fact, in many ways, he's been conservative as a leader in terms of small government, fiscal hawkishness. Mexico's debt to GDP is 50% right now and has stayed stable despite the pandemic. That's caused some challenges in terms of the ability of Mexico to make large scale investments into its domestic economy, given the pandemic. But nonetheless has made the business community feel more comfortable with him.
Instead, there's been a focus on tax collection and on reducing government expenditure. So much so that there's a problem on execution, weakening and inefficient, but nonetheless, comparatively talented civil service in Mexico. It's a reason why when you go to the World Bank or the IDB, you see so many former Mexico technocrats in the bureaucracy, because they were always seen to be some of the most talented from all of the Western hemisphere. Overall, I would say the Mexican economy is positioned to do quite well over the coming, let's say five, 10 years.
The domestic political issues are the biggest concerns. In particular, President Lopez Obrador going after his country's electoral institute, trying to take away some 80% of their funding, which would, if it went through, undermine the ability of Mexico to have free and fair elections. And there's really no justification for that decision. AMLO claims it's because he actually won the 2006 election, which was razor thin decided against him. And it's also why he was quite late to congratulate Biden on his 2020 win, you might remember that. And even some of his own supporters are befuddled by it, since AMLO's Morena party is likely to win upcoming elections anyway. Unlike Trump, Erdogan, Orban, Bolsonaro, all of these leaders, it's not like AMLO needs to gut Mexico's democracy in order to keep his party in power. But the other point is that he's also likely to fail at this so-called electoral reform as Mexico's Supreme Court will rule against the so-called reform. And there've also been massive demonstrations against it across Mexico, largely from the middle and upper classes, showing the power of Mexico's civil society which is hardly going away. This is not going to become an autocracy, just as Brazil hasn't, just as the United States hasn't.
And when he fails, he's almost certainly going to call his supporters against the corrupt Supreme Court, as he would have it, all of which does undermine rule of law in the country. I will say that I am less worried about this than some in the same way that I was less worried about January 6th in the US as not a coup, or January 8th in Brazil as not a coup and not able to fundamentally undermine democracy in these countries. In part because I fully expect AMLO will be out after his single constitutionally mandated six-year term, and I also think that either of his potential Morena party successors won't have the same charisma or capacity to pursue these sorts of policies.
But also, and here I think this isn't appreciated by many of AMLO's opponents, I do think that there are real issues here. I mean, AMLO is broadly skeptical of all sorts of, as he calls them, neo-liberal conservative elites, that's a mouthful, and their institutions, because they've had enormous access and influence across the board historically, including in the judiciary. They really could shape policy or stop initiatives, given their influence over all branches of government. There has been corruption. There has been a lot of corruption in the distribution of social benefits, in influence over Congress and legislation in procurement processes. Tax authority, where the Mexican government had been clearly letting companies off the hook, which AMLO has tried to change at least somewhat successfully. And I think part of the elite anger at this administration is that the elites can no longer influence the regulatory and legislative policy as they could before. And while the judiciary is an important and necessary check on AMLO's power, it's also hard to argue that economic elites haven't had undue influence on Mexico's court system. Both of those things are actually true.
There are other places I could spend time, there's been very limited success in curtailing violence in Mexico, dealing with the drug cartels. That's a long history of failure in Mexico and I don't come away any more optimistic from my trip in Mexico this week. I am a little bemused by the criticism though, that AMLO doesn't travel internationally enough. And it's true, he almost never leaves the country. He's been five years in office now, I think he's been to the United States four times, each time for one day. And he made one trip to Central America and Cuba and that's it. I mean, for the head of a G-20 economy, that is unheard of. And he also doesn't really care.
But I want to say it's not like there's any particular debate about Mexico's development model. It's not like people are saying, "Oh, maybe we need to work more with Europe or hedge with China." AMLO has zero interest in that and indeed, one of the first things he mentioned to me was his concern that China's growth would unbalance the geopolitical order and lead to conflict. There's something that underpins this that's very important, which is last year, Mexico's trade with Texas was five times its total trade with all of Latin America.
Unlike Brazil, unlike other developing countries where there's lots of discussion about potential competing development models, there really isn't with Mexico. It is a US and USMCA focused model and I think appropriately so. Meanwhile, AMLO has been traveling relentlessly across Mexico by car or on commercial airlines, meeting with the Mexican people. And he's the first president in a very long time that's spent that kind of time with Mexico's poor across the country and that's a big piece of his popularity, which has been quite high over the course of his entire term. I personally would like it if he would travel more because I care about foreign policy. But in the context of Trump's America First or Biden's US foreign policy for an American middle class, you can certainly understand that you can have more sympathy.
And I think about my own friend, Iván Duque, who I've known very well for years now, the former Colombian president, he's loved by the Washington establishment, but ultimately was very unpopular in Colombia, in part because he was seen as being kind of a creature of Washington consensus and not as interested in Colombia. And I think AMLO completely gets that in today's geopolitical environment, that just doesn't play.
I think the right comparison for AMLO on the global stage is Modi, India's prime minister, in terms of he's from the underclass. In the case of Modi, from the under caste, focuses on the underclass and wants to take on colonial elites and their institutions that have always been unpopular with the average people in the country. That includes the independent media and NGOs which are viewed, even if somewhat unfairly, as educated elites that don't care about the people and haven't historically.
By the way, when I mentioned the Modi comparison to AMLO, he immediately liked it. In fact, recognizes that he doesn't do as well in Mexico as Modi does in India because Modi also has the Hindu nationalism call card that he can play and does play, which AMLO is certainly not doing in terms of Catholicism and the role in Mexico's government institutions. Now, of course, that's a mixed bag. Because while Modi has become an essential friend to the United States as a part of the Quad, the relationship can only get so close and there is that tension between the United States and Mexico, and the West and Mexico accordingly.
But I do think that putting all of that in context gives you a lot more balance about what's happening in Mexico right now and Mexico's role with the US and Mexico's role that it doesn't have with a lot of the rest of the world than we've been reading in a lot of the media, and as a consequence, I thought it was really interesting to talk about it.
Anyway, that's it for me and I'm delighted that I've had a chance to get back there and I'm sure I will be again real soon, and I hope everyone is well. Talk to you soon.
- What We’re Watching: Biden in Mexico, Japan's Kishida on tour, Ukraine’s eastern flank ›
- What We’re Watching: Biden at the border, Three Amigos Summit, China’s reopening ›
- Immigration a Biden priority at Three Amigos Summit ›
- Can AMLO live up to Mexico’s critical moment? Jorge Ramos discusses ›
- The Graphic Truth: Bracing for a surge at the US-Mexico border ›
- AMLO wants a popular successor - GZERO Media ›
- Why Mexico is a key issue in the 2024 US election - GZERO Media ›
- Trump trial: How would a conviction hurt his reelection bid? - GZERO Media ›
Iván Duque: I should have been more forceful with US on drugs
Iván Duque has few regrets from his time as Colombia's president. But if he could go back and do better on one thing, perhaps he should have been more vocal on the War on Drugs.
For Duque, there's too much focus on the supply side of the problem — Colombian cocaine — and too little attention on the demand side: Americans hungry for the drug.
In a GZERO World interview, Duque tells Ian Bremmer that he brought this up with both Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Maybe, he adds, he should have said it more and raised his voice.
Another thing he wished he could have done more on: migration from Venezuela.
- Can there be capitalism without freedom? No, says Iván Duque ›
- Colombia's new president Gustavo Petro: Biden team aware the war on drugs has failed ›
- The Graphic Truth: Did the war on drugs work? ›
- How to solve Colombia's cocaine problem ›
- Will Gustavo Petro overhaul Colombia's economy, forests, and drug policy? ›
Can there be capitalism without freedom? No, says Iván Duque
Should the US still try to engage with countries run by regimes antithetical to its own?
For former Colombian President Iván Duque, the democratic consensus in the Western Hemisphere means that "there's no space for autocracies or for dictatorships." That means not imposing democracy on everyone but defending democratic values everywhere, he tells Ian Bremmer in a GZERO World interview.
Meanwhile, capitalism is coming under pressure — including from authoritarian regimes like China, which is selling its own brand of state-led capitalism as opposed to the free-market capitalism prevalent in democracies.
Duque pushes back against the notion that there can truly be capitalism where people can't choose their leaders. His preferred solution is "conscious capitalism," which creates value but also seeks to close social gaps.
Five choices
We have lots of big elections on deck in 2022. Today we’ll preview five that will feature high international stakes and especially colorful candidates.
France (April) — President Emmanuel Macron is expected to seek re-election, and at this early stage he looks likely to win. Marine Le Pen, an anti-EU far-right firebrand, appears set to try to rebrand herself yet again in hopes of earning a second-round rematch with the centrist Macron, who defeated her by nearly 2-1 in their head-to-head battle in 2017. But Le Pen will be elbowed on one side by center-right establishment candidate Valérie Pécresse. On the other, she’ll face constant pressure from France’s new election wildcard, Eric Zemmour, a TV personality who claims left-wing elites want to consolidate power by replacing white French citizens with immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East.
Hungary (April) — Here the outsized personality belongs to incumbent Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister since 2010, who now faces his toughest election challenge to date. Though Orbán insists he wants Hungary to remain within the EU, criticism of the union forms a central part of his appeal to loyal supporters. His moves in recent years to tighten his grip on power, stack the country’s courts with loyalists, silence media critics, close the country’s borders to non-EU migrants, and restrict the rights of LGBT people have earned pushback from the EU. But the big story here is that six opposition parties have joined forces with the single aim of ousting Orbán.
Colombia (May-June) — Colombians will choose a new Congress in March, but it’s the presidential election in May and June that might make history. For now, Senator Gustavo Petro, a former Marxist guerrilla and mayor of Bogotá, is the wildcard to watch — and the favorite to win. He owes part of his popularity to his own formidable political gifts. But he’s also helped by the unpopularity of the incumbent, Iván Duque, and a year of controversy and public frustration over Duque’s botched tax reform and pandemic response plans. (Duque is term-limited, even if he weren’t politically toxic.) A Petro victory would mark a major political turning point in Colombia, traditionally a center-right country in which decades of war with Marxist militants — and the ongoing disaster next door in socialist-led Venezuela — have long stigmatized leftist politics at the national level.
Brazil (October) — Many recent elections around the world have pitted a charismatic populist against a defender of the political establishment. Not so in Brazil next year, where October’s presidential election will feature a battle for the ages between incumbent right-wing lightning-rod Jair Bolsonaro and former president Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva, one of Latin America’s most dynamic left-wing populists. Critics have hammered Bolsonaro for his dismissive attitude toward COVID, and he’s aroused anger by denouncing the integrity of the election itself. Lula is well ahead in early polls, but Bolsonaro’s popularity has risen recently on promises of cash help for the poor, a decidedly off-brand maneuver for a leader who usually dismisses the need for empathy in policymaking. These two brilliant political performance artists will probably deliver the most volatile election of 2022.
US midterms (November) — Much of the US political drama next year will come directly from Donald Trump. The former president and master showman hopes to use November’s midterm congressional elections to tighten his grip on the Republican Party ahead of the 2024 presidential election. In many ways, the hotly contested races for majority control of Congress will be a referendum on increasingly unpopular President Joe Biden, and on Democrats too busy arguing with one another to deliver on some of their grandest campaign promises from 2020. But Trump’s active backing for Republicans who signal personal loyalty to him and his agenda against more independent-minded GOP incumbents makes this set of midterms — as well as state and local elections — less predictable than most.
We’ll also be writing in the coming weeks about upcoming elections in South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Kenya, and elsewhere.Demonstrators take part in a protest against the tax reform of President Ivan Duque's government in Bogota.
Don’t tax the dead: Colombia’s crisis
There's never a great time to impose higher taxes on funeral services — but doing it in the middle of a raging pandemic is an especially bad move. Yet that was one of a number of measures that the Colombian government proposed last week in a controversial new tax bill that has provoked the country's largest and most violent protests in decades.
In the days since, the finance minister has resigned, the tax reform has been pulled, and President Iván Duque has called for fresh dialogue with activists, union leaders, and opposition politicians.
But demonstrations, vandalism, and deadly clashes with police have only intensified. Two dozen people are dead, 40 are missing, and the UN has criticized Colombian police for their heavy-handed response.
How'd we get here? The Colombian government has a common math problem: it spends more money than it raises.
Even before the pandemic, the country's oil exports — a major source of government revenue — were dwindling, and over the past year, the deficit tripled. Now, to pull the country out of its worst economic crisis in decades, it's even more urgent to top up state coffers.
But Colombia has one of the lowest tax hauls of any country in the OECD, and ratings agencies warn that without a tax reform of some kind, a downgrade awaits. That would make it more expensive for Colombia to borrow money abroad, depleting state resources even further.
Duque's proposal would have raised levies on corporations and the rich, while boosting social spending to alleviate poverty. But it also expanded taxes for the middle class and poor, eliminated exemptions for pensions, and added a sales tax to many staple consumer goods and services. Even water would have gotten more expensive. Water!
The math may have been sound but, in a country reeling from the pandemic, the politics were horrific. Over the past year, 3 million more Colombians fell into poverty, raising the poverty rate by 7 points to a staggering 42 percent of the population (source in Spanish.) Thousands of businesses have closed. And the country is now in the throes of a third COVID wave: daily new cases have soared sixfold in the past two months.
Small wonder that when the tax bill was unveiled, three-quarters of Colombians supported a national strike in response.
But these protests are about more than taxes. For several years, a large part of Colombian society has been upset about rising inequality, an epidemic of violence against human rights leaders, rising crime in the cities, and poor healthcare and education.
Just before the COVID crisis started, in late 2019, mass protests over these issues shook Bogotá for days. Today's protests are in part a resurgence of grievances bottled up — and made worse — by the pandemic.
Elections loom. Next year, Colombians will elect a new president. Term limits keep Duque from running again — and with his meager 30 percent approval rating, that's probably just as well. But the social crisis has boosted the fortunes of Senator Gustavo Petro, a leftwing former mayor of Bogotá who got his start in political life as part of the M-19 urban guerrilla movement.
A recent poll showed Petro would get close to 40 percent of the vote if the ballot were held today, an increase of 15 points since last fall (source in Spanish). That a leftwinger should be so popular is a sea change in Colombia, long a center-right country in which decades of war with Marxist-inspired militants — and the recent disaster next door in socialist-led Venezuela — had created a stigma around leftist politics at the national level.
Colombia's crisis is also a broader caution: Many countries are staggering out of the pandemic with weak state finances. The IMF recently found that debt as a percentage of GDP in emerging market economies soared 10 points last year to an average of 65 percent. Meanwhile, poverty and social spending needs have only risen as a result of the economic crisis.
The current upheaval in Colombia is a taste of what could come for many middle-income and poorer countries if they botch the politics of raising revenue.
But no matter how they go about it — not taxing the dead is a smart way to avoid antagonizing the living.
Colombia's President Ivan Duque looks on during the announcement of the granting of legal status of temporary protection to Venezuelan migrants in Bogota.
Colombia’s Angela Merkel moment
Colombian President Iván Duque earlier this week announced that as many as 1.7 million Venezuelan migrants currently in Colombia will now be authorized to live and work legally in the country for ten years.
As humanitarian gestures by world leaders go, it's hard to find something on this scale in recent history.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's fateful "Wir schaffen das" (We can do this) decision in 2015 allowed up to one million refugees to apply for asylum. Duque's move, by contrast, welcomes nearly twice that number of people to stay for at least a decade.
Bold as it is, it could also be deeply unpopular. To refresh, Colombia has received almost a third of the roughly 5 million Venezuelans who have fled economic collapse and political chaos in their home country in recent years. That's more than any other country, by far.
And while many Colombians were initially welcoming to their neighbors in need — in part because in the 1980s and 1990s Venezuela was a refuge for millions of Colombians fleeing violence themselves — attitudes have hardened over time.
Two thirds of Colombians now oppose Venezuelans staying in Colombia, and three quarters say the Venezuelan border should remain closed even after pandemic-related entry restrictions are lifted, according to a January survey by the Medellín-based pollster Invamer.
In part that's because of economic concerns: with the official unemployment rate at close to 16 percent, many Colombians worry about competition to find jobs. Social media-fueled rumors about Venezuelans being responsible for crime spikes in Colombia's big cities have added to the stigma, even though — like most social media rumors — they've been disproven.
Normalizing the status of 1.7 million people will doubtless add to those pressures, while also potentially encouraging more refugees to come if they think there will be further amnesties of this kind in the future.
So why is Duque — struggling with a mere 36 percent approval rating — doing it? For one thing, there are moral and even international legal arguments for the obligation to protect refugees. But there is also a very strong practical one: what's the alternative?
While some Venezuelan refugees have opted to return home — as GZERO media found last July — the overwhelming majority will stay.
Giving them a way to do so legally makes it possible for them to join the formal economy, where they can earn normal wages, receive benefits, and pay taxes. And it gives the state the ability to better keep track of who is in the country and where. Importantly, once they have status, they will be eligible for COVID vaccines — a subject of some recent controversy when Duque said that undocumented Venezuelans wouldn't get the jab.
The alternative is to leave close to two million people in a state of legal and financial limbo, increasing their desperation, making it easier for them not only to undercut Colombian workers, but to be targeted and recruited by criminal groups.
It's by no means an easy decision, and Duque could yet pay a steep political price. What would you have done if you were Duque? Please let us know.
Colombia's humanitarian gesture for Venezuelan refugees merits US support
Ian Bremmer shares his perspective on global politics on this week's World In (More Than) 60 Seconds:
Number one, why did Colombia's president grant legal status to 1.7 million Venezuelan migrants?
Well, because they have them, first of all. Because given the extraordinary economic collapse and the human rights abuses of Venezuelans under the Maduro presidency, not to mention the coronavirus crisis making their lives even worse, they've been fleeing, and most of them have ended up in Colombia. Not providing legal status means they can't work, means they have no path for a future. Some of them have even fled back to Venezuela or returned to Venezuela, and again just shows just how critically difficult their life has been. It's a humanitarian gesture of pretty staggering degree. It makes an enormous difference in the lives of these people. Think about how the United States under Biden now preparing to accept 125,000 refugees per year, up 10 times from what it was just a year ago, the world's most powerful country. The wealthy countries never get overwhelmed with refugees the way the poorest countries do. It's states in Sub-Saharan Africa and it's South and Southeast Asia and it's Latin America, and in the Western hemisphere, it's been Colombia.
Venezuela has been the biggest humanitarian crisis and catastrophe and the Colombian government has had to deal with millions of Venezuelan refugees and now they're taking responsibility. And the United States should be fully supportive and should provide humanitarian aid to help the Colombian government deal with this very significant lift, and also to try to reduce the level of anti-Venezuelan sentiment. Because, of course, when you have that many refugees, they're not doing very well. There's going to be domestic criticism, that it's an eyesore, that they're criminals, that they're bringing, they're spreading disease. And the more capable the Colombian government is to actually economically integrate these people and to get them into positions where they can take care of themselves. They can provide for themselves, their family, the better it'll for everybody. So quite some good news in an environment that desperately needs it.
Okay, number two. What are the political ramifications of Netanyahu's corruption trial?
Here, we're talking about a sitting prime minister in Israel who has been indicted for corruption charges and is now facing a trial. And just yesterday, he sat in the docks and left after about half hour and he says, "It's a witch hunt." He says, "The judicial system is rigged." It's actually very analogous to the way that former President Donald Trump has treated his own two now impeachment cases in the United States. Some would say that the Israeli legal system works well because even a sitting prime minister can be forced to stand trial. Lots of other people think that the level of Netanyahu refusing to take seriously the claims and the cases undermining it in public and social media, the fact that most of Netanyahu's supporters agree that it's rigged, just as kind of most of Trump's supporters believe that the last election was stolen, it's actually undermining rule of law in the one government across the Middle East that has been the strongest consolidated democracy in terms of legitimacy of political institutions and unrest. And yes, I know we're not talking about the Palestinians in the occupied territory, but we are talking about everybody, including Palestinians and Arabs and the rest that are living inside Israel proper under Israeli law. And what's happening right now in Israel, I think is creating more polarization and is starting to delegitimize the institutions in that country. Netanyahu's trying to get another delay in the case and the calling witnesses until after elections at the end of March. Of course, elections are happening now in Israel every few months. So, extend and pretend, that's what Netanyahu's strategy is and he has proven to be quite a survivor on the Israeli political stage.
Finally, what is going on with Elon Musk and Bitcoin?
Well, damned if I know, because Elon Musk, in addition to being the most wealthy person in the world, also has a fairly insane social media feed and frequently writes about and tweets about anything imaginable on his mind, which given how many followers he has and given how much money he has puts him in a position of pretty extraordinary power. Now, look, I personally think that when the world's wealthiest man decided to tweet out in favor of GameStop with his tens of millions of followers, a stock that had virtually no underlying value, and therefore individually did more to pump up that stock and as a consequence put enormous numbers of rank-and-file retail investors at risk because they believe Elon. I think that's irresponsible. It's not illegal. There's nothing illegal about it, but it's incredibly irresponsible. I tell you, it bothers me that the wealthiest man in the world, and therefore one of the most powerful men in the world, has so limited regard for civil society, has so limited regard for the wellbeing of his fellow citizens, both in the United States and globally. And we can say he's doing fantastic things as an entrepreneur. And by the way, I do think that Elon Musk as an entrepreneur, as a technologist has been staggeringly successful, and I am thankful for that. In terms of not just electric vehicles, but also his willingness to invest in space and his willingness to set up prizes to get better development and advanced technologies and the Hyperloop and all of these things. Some of which will work, many of which will not, but we need people taking risks like that.
But that is very different than his public presence on issues of policy, on issues that affect the average human being, where I think he has been one of the most irresponsible forces in the country and that deeply bothers me and it's why the fact that he's putting an enormous amount of money into Bitcoin, his company has, Tesla, where he's a 20% owner and he is also putting Bitcoin symbol in his bio on social media. Oh, see this is what's going on, Dogecoin, everyone should invest in Dogecoin going to the moon. It doesn't mean anything. It's completely speculative. It moves a lot of money. And maybe it's just a game to him and maybe it's just a game to Dave Portnoy over at Barstool Sports. But these people are hurting people and they're hurting people just as much as the folks that are promoting fake news on the left and on the right in the mainstream media and the trolls on social media. And I think that with that kind of money and that kind of influence, you should take some responsibility. There's a reason why I personally don't buy stocks and currencies, and frankly it's because as someone who is a public figure with nowhere close to the level of reach and influence that someone like Elon has, I don't want the conflicts of interest. I want people to view my perspective as having authenticity and I think that there's some responsibility behind that and you can't be, if you're talking your book or if people think that you're talking your book, it undermines it.
Colombia’s President Iván Duque on early pandemic response: “Multilateralism didn’t work as it should”
In an interview with GZERO Media, Colombia's President Iván Duque discusses early missteps in global coordination on pandemic response that he feels exacerbated the spread of the virus. "If we all had acknowledged what was really going on in Asia, maybe we would have taken faster draconian measures to protect the world," he told Ian Bremmer.
While Colombia was initially praised for a swift and successful approach to COVID-19, infection rates and cases have spiked in recent weeks as lockdown restrictions ease in order to alleviate strain on an already battered economy. In the conversation, Bremmer and Duque also discuss the Venezuelan refugee crisis, and how economic fallout of the pandemic has forced at least 100,000 to leave Colombia and return home.