Trump and Mamdani Look Like Caudillos

By Leandro Narloch And Carlos Poggio

The American left and right look increasingly like their Latin American counterparts.

Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani wants New York City to open five municipally owned grocery stores to lower food prices. The plan may sound modern and progressive, but to anyone from Latin America, it sounds eerily familiar.

In the Brazilian state of Bahia, the Cesta do Povo (“People’s Basket”) grocery chain was created by a conservative governor, failed spectacularly and was eventually privatized by a leftist government. Bolivia’s state-run Empresa de Apoyo a la Producción de Alimentos, or Food Production Support Co., has become a cautionary tale of inefficiency and corruption. As Latin American countries can attest, these experiments often start with noble intentions and end with scandals, bloated payrolls and empty shelves.

On the right, meanwhile, President Trump’s brand of protectionism mirrors Latin American trade policies. When the White House imposes tariffs and vows to shield American industry from foreign competition, Brazilians must feel a sense of déjà vu. This is the same “import substitution” strategy that Brazilian governments have embraced for the past 60 years in an attempt to build self-sufficiency. The result wasn’t industrial strength but a flood of overpriced subpar goods, chronic inefficiency, and economic stagnation.

Even worse, protectionism fuels the rise of rent-seeking lobbies pushing for tariffs, subsidies and other favors. The more a sector struggles to compete, the louder it shouts for help. Instead of encouraging productivity and efficiency, the system rewards political connections and lobbying prowess. The same pattern is emerging in the U.S., where entire industries lobby to be protected from tariffs, regulations and foreign rivals.

In this way, protectionism opens the door to another feature of Latin American politics, clientism. Politics revolves around powerful individuals, not parties or ideas. It’s the land of peronismo, fujimorismo and varguismo — all movements defined solely by charismatic leaders. Similarly, Mr. Trump’s current hold on the Republican Party isn’t primarily ideological; it is personal. Party platforms no longer matter much. Loyalty to the leader is everything. In a healthy democracy, institutions like Congress would constrain the excesses of the president. But in the Latin American tradition of caudillismo, institutions are useful only if they serve the leader. If not, they are attacked, undermined or ignored.

In 2007, Argentina’s government fired Graciela Bevacqua, head of the consumer price index at the National Institute of Statistics and Census. Her offense? Refusing to manipulate inflation data. Under President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, independent statisticians were purged, official inflation numbers were falsified, and economists who published alternative estimates reported being pressured to stop.

Fast forward to this August. Mr. Trump, unhappy with a jobs report showing weak employment growth and downward revisions to earlier figures, fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer. Yet again, Latin America comes to U.S. politics.

When Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig called Brazil the “land of the future” in 1941, he meant it as praise. Today the future seems to be arriving in reverse: Instead of Brazil becoming more developed, the U.S. is beginning to look like Brazil and other Latin American countries. The habits that have long undermined democratic institutions south of the Rio Grande are gaining ground in Washington. America should take note: Latin America’s political pathologies are one import that we shouldn’t let across the border.

Mr. Narloch is author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the History of Brazil.” Mr. Poggio is a professor of political science at Berea College.