F. Xavier Mena from ESADE: 'The checks and balances have begun to work in Trump's first hundred days'

•    ‘Trump has the lowest popularity rating of any modern president and a net negative job approval rating, which has never happened before in the first hundred days of a US presidency’, said Àngel Castiñeira, associate professor in the Department of Social Sciences at ESADE

‘Indeed, the checks and balances have begun to work’, said Francesc Xavier Mena, a professor in the Department of Economics, Finance and Accounting at ESADE, today, speaking at an event jointly organised by the ESADE Alumni Finance Club and the ESADE Chair in Leaderships and Democratic Governance. The event looked at the geopolitics and, specifically, the ideology of the new Trump administration after his first hundred days as president of the United States of America.

‘Trump already knows that his signature, on an executive order, has a ways to go. He has already begun to scrap deadlines and redefine objectives, and his job approval rating in these first hundred days is rock bottom, comparatively speaking’, he added.

David Murillo, a lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences at ESADE, agreed with Mena that ‘checks and balances work’. ‘There is a balance of power and checks between the people and the structure’, he noted, adding that Trump ‘has sought to use executive orders to give meaning to his first hundred days’.

With regard to his staying in office, Murillo noted that the US president is symptomatic of a change in globalisation and ‘Trump’s persistence can be traced to the world of the Internet and social media’. ‘Some 40% of young people get their news through Facebook’, he said. In this regard, he noted, ‘Trump has placed the issue of fake news squarely on the table.’ ‘There has been a shift in the perception of who benefits from the current globalisation, because the values of the capitalist system are broken’, he concluded.

Professor Mena also looked at the relationship with various sectors, such as the automobile industry and agriculture, where maize producers are an important counterweight. Mena noted that ‘they are a traditionally Republican sector and the world’s largest exporter’, and they do not want to be harmed by decisions to bring the automobile industry, currently located in Mexico, back to the US. As for the border wall, the economics professor noted that ‘Trump has sort of let the issue slide; it is no longer even on standby’. He added, ‘the recently approved budget does not include any funding for it.’

Trump’s leadership

Àngel Castiñeira, an associate professor in the Department of Social Sciences and director of the ESADE Chair in Leaderships and Democratic Governance, discussed the particular leadership style of Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the US, highlighting three personality traits: ‘he is direct, intimidating, self-assured and results-oriented (reminiscent of the prototypical management or leadership function associated with business schools); he connects with the emotional climate of many of his countrymen; and he does not shy away from internal or external confrontation’.

‘In his first hundred days, Trump’s image has deteriorated both at home and abroad, although external agents do not have the vote in the US’, Castiñeira said. He went on to note that, ‘Trump has the lowest popularity rating of any modern president and the lowest net job approval rating, which has never happened before in the first hundred days of a US presidency’. ‘A military invasion similar to the Iraq invasion model, which gave President Bush an enormous popularity boost – despite being a disaster – was a voting emergency and the same thing could happen with Trump’, Castiñeira said.