During López Obrador's six-year term, GDP per capita contracted by 0.4 percent, the first negative record since Miguel de la Madrid spent his entire government facing the López Portilla legacy. INEGI published yesterday the figures corresponding to 2024, and in the last year of the Tabasqueño in Palacio Nacional (who now exercises remote command), the Mexican economy grew by 1.3 percent, the year in which the previous president had promised a figure almost five times higher (6.0 percent).
If the mentioned crises and rebounds between the six-year terms of De la Madrid and Peña Nieto are also eliminated, the average rises to 2.8 percent. However, that effect is canceled out by removing from the calculation the year of the pandemic (2020), with its contraction of -8.4 percent, and the year of the rebound (2021), when GDP expanded by 6.0 percent (much less than the drop given López Obrador's policies of not rescuing jobs).
Considering all years, without removing crises or rebounds (that is, 1983-84, 1986-87, 1995-96, and 2009-10), between 1982 and 2018, the Mexican economy grew by 2.1 percent, a figure slightly higher than the 2.0 percent achieved by Obradorism, excluding the pandemic and recovery.
Only the Tabasqueño refinery and the peninsular train cost more than a trillion pesos, and neither of them is even finished by 2025 (besides the spectacular failure of the railway, which has had to reduce its operations due to its lack of appeal).
López Obrador obtained a negative record in GDP per capita because he began the destruction even before starting his term, with the cancellation of the Texcoco airport, an action that ensured a slight recession in 2019 (-0.4 percent). In the subsequent years, he laid the foundations to further reduce the long-term growth of the Mexican economy, with astronomical investments in projects that not only have a low impact on national GDP but will also incur financial losses throughout their operational existence. The most important, Pemex (which was received broken and in a hole, and which sank much deeper with its strategy of continuing to dig).
With some luck, GDP per capita at least will not have another negative record. The reality was very different: 0.9 percent. Of course, the pandemic occurred, the great pretext (and the perfect excuse) for AMLO to argue that his economic train went off the rails.
He also likes trains and will make his own, aiming to reach the northern border, aside from adding cargo to the disaster of the Maya Train. The future looks equally negative. In this first year, a recession is also looming, and it will be another six-year term of low growth.
The commitment, outlined in his National Development Plan, was that the average for the six-year term would be 4.0 percent. The average of the remaining four years was 2.0 percent, exactly half of what was promised. How does this average record compare with the so-called "neoliberal era," so criticized by the Tabasqueño?
As part of the dreams of restoring Mexico as an oil power, it is necessary to add refining (especially the construction of Dos Bocas). Finally, a financial and ecological nightmare: the Maya Train, which destroys jungles, cenotes, and wildlife.
Blindly obeying the so-called "Plan C" inherited by the Tabasqueño, Claudia Sheinbaum has already consumed the destruction of the Judicial Power, an even more disastrous start than canceling Texcoco.
