A polarized country, an unprecedented mobilization for racial justice, a judiciary leaning to the right, a tense and aggressive way of being in public life.
The footprint that Donald Trump has left in the United States spans multiple areas.
The president who appeared reneging on traditional politics, and who aspires to be reelected next Tuesday, also leaves a legacy in the form of traditional policies in four years, which EL PAÍS then reviews in four blocks:
1. IMMIGRATION.
The fear of the other in the United States
SONIA CORONA, Miami
As soon as Donald Trump assumed the presidency, in January 2017, a maxim was established for immigration: discourage the entry of anyone from outside the country.
The president has never hidden his rejection of the integration of immigrants and has even turned the issue into a campaign slogan: "Build the wall!"
And the wall is more than an engineering work on the southern border, it has become the detention and deportation of thousands of people;
the increase in the restriction of immigration procedures;
and the strengthening of the bodies that monitor compliance with a series of regulations that are becoming more demanding every day.
Upon arriving at the White House, Trump ordered the hiring of 15,000 agents for the Department of Homeland Security, which was followed by the strengthening of the immigration police (ICE) and the border patrol.
Raids to locate and deport undocumented immigrants became increasingly common scenes in various cities.
The immigrant tracking force became relentless: ICE was no longer just looking for undocumented immigrants with backgrounds, but expanded its functions to detect anyone who did not have a permit to stay in the country.
In US consulates and embassies around the world the criteria for granting visas have been tightened.
The first to experience it were specialized workers, those with H1-B visas, who since 2017 have been subjected to strict scrutiny.
In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the issuance of immigration documents has once again been at the center of the controversy.
Trump signed an executive order to prevent the issuance of some work visas - on the grounds that the local economy should be strengthened by the work of Americans - and also restricted the entry of university students.
The virus also served as a justification to close the transit of the border with Mexico for several months.
Trump ignited the immigration debate since his first campaign for the presidency by pointing directly to Mexico to blame it for irregular immigration.
His star proposal became the construction of a wall in the more than 3,000 kilometers that form the border.
The president has tried to obtain funds through Congress for the project that so far, according to estimates by his government, has been built about 400 kilometers.
At the same time, Trump has put pressure on Mexico and some Central American countries to prevent the flow of migrants north.
Mexico and Guatemala, for example, have become havens for those who have requested asylum in the United States and await a hearing before a judge to resolve their immigration status.
In 2018, images of migrant caravans traveling from Central America were followed by the display of detention centers where families were separated and minors were taken to facilities where they were locked up in cages.
A study by the Immigration Hub notes that the separation of families under his government is one of the biggest criticisms among voters.
"His anti-immigrant vision is one of the reasons why some Americans vote against him," says the document.
Those who have knocked on the doors of the Supreme Court to fight for their permanence in the United States have been the Dreamers, irregular immigrants who came to the country as children and adopted it as their home.
In court, they have defended the validity of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, implemented during the Barack Obama administration and which gives them a route to legally remain in the country.
Trump has sought to end the program to start the deportation of some of the 700,000 young people who have taken up the initiative in these years.
At least it has managed to reduce the period during which the permits are authorized.
2. ECONOMY.
The merit and the blame
PABLO GUIMÓN, Washington
When Trump asks for the vote, he does it for the economy.
A curious fact when he goes to re-election with a country in recession, devastated by the pandemic.
But he created the best economy in history, he says, and he will do it again when the health crisis passes.
Disregarding the hyperbole brand of the house, in the first part of the message he is partly right: Trump inherited a strong economy, expanding since the end of the crisis in 2009, and kept it even stronger.
Growth accelerated in the first half of his term, and from 2019 slowed down (from 2.9% growth in 2018 to 2.3% in 2019), hinting at the beginning of the end of an unusually long period of uninterrupted growth, which would end abruptly due to the halt in activity due to the coronavirus.
That long period of growth created a situation of near full employment (a 3.5% unemployment since the end of 2019), which led to higher wages, including those of lower-income workers.
The trend started already with Obama, but it is true that, from 2017 to 2018, wages grew by 2.9%, the largest increase (not adjusted for inflation) in 10 years.
The growth of that first stage was somewhat artificial, according to its critics, driven by a tax cut approved in December 2017, the largest in three decades.
It was a regressive downgrade, which rewarded above all companies and the highest incomes, and which did not have the support of Democrats due to its effects on the public coffers and its potential to deepen the inequalities that weigh down the economy most powerful on the planet.
Soon after, another stimulus to growth would arrive, with legislation in February 2018 that raised the limits of public spending.
Public investment skyrocketed (in Defense, but not only), even before the pandemic, faster than during the last Democratic Administration.
Monetary policy has also contributed to prolonging the growth cycle: Trump put a Jerome Powell at the head of the Federal Reserve who, pressured to insult by the president who appointed him, has prioritized growth while maintaining ultra-low interest rates.
Another of the pillars of Trump's economy has been the imposition of tariffs on imports and the renegotiation of trade agreements, with the aim of protecting domestic industry from competition from countries with lower wages, such as China or Mexico.
The clearest result has been a costly trade war with China, still unfinished, which despite its efforts has skyrocketed the trade deficit.
Trump began his term with luck in favor (he inherited an economy much better than his two predecessors) and ends with luck against (in the form of a devastating pandemic).
Its economic legacy can therefore be divided into two parts.
The first, until March of this year, with excellent employment and income data;
the second, since the pandemic hit, with unemployment figures (14.7% in April) not seen since the Great Depression, which have improved slightly in recent months (7.9% in September), but whose trend is still Surrounded by unknowns by a pandemic that does not stop and whose control does not contribute to Trump's electoral rush to reopen the economy.
Although much of the activity is beyond the control of the president, it would not be fair to claim all credit for the good without admitting responsibility for the bad.
It happens that the effort to raise growth in the short term, which allowed the bonanza of the first part of the trumpeconomy, in turn placed the country in a worse situation to respond to challenges such as the one that has turned the end of his mandate upside down .
3. ENVIRONMENT.
Obsessive dysregulation
PABLO XIMÉNEZ DE SANDOVAL, Los Angeles
At a rally on September 8 in Florida, Trump referred to himself as "the number one president in the environment since Teddy Roosevelt."
He explained that he wanted to sell himself as the most environmentalist since George Washington, but his advisers held him back.
Claims like these fill the speeches of Trump, who boasts of having "the cleanest air" while protecting work.
The legacy of these almost four years, however, is an obsessive deregulation of all the advances of previous administrations.
The Trump Administration's biggest attack on climate change policies may be symbolic, not so much practical.
On June 1, 2017, Trump solemnly announced from the White House Rose Garden that the United States was withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement.
He alleged economic reasons and alleged obligations that weakened the United States vis-à-vis other countries.
"It's time to put Youngstown, Detroit and Pittsburgh ahead of Paris," he said.
The slam of the framework agreement signed by 195 countries was a watershed in the global fight against climate change and a sign that the world could not count on the United States. While climate change policies advance in some states and municipalities, the United States It is no longer formally committed to reducing polluting emissions as a country, despite being the second largest emitter after China.
Internally, Trump's four years have been a relentless assault on environmental regulation dating back to Richard Nixon.
The first chosen to head the US environmental agency (EPA) was Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma attorney general whose tenure was characterized by having put his position at the service of polluting industries.
Just four days after taking office, he signed an executive order to accelerate the construction of two large pipelines (Keystone XL and Dakota Access) opposed by environmental groups and native communities.
In the first four months in office, Trump signed 14 executive orders to dismantle regulations with which the United States intended to reduce its emissions between 26% and 28% in 2025 compared to 2005.
In the following years, the EPA has been turned into a battering ram against environmental policies, systematically relaxing regulations in favor of polluting industries.
The most significant case, due to its immediate consequences and the phenomenal battle it has caused, is the annulment of the polluting limits for cars that Obama agreed with California.
The most populous state in the US has had a permit for five decades to set its own polluting limits for cars.
Another 15 states follow in this regulation and all together account for a third of the country's automobile market.
Trump raised those limits, as demanded by the auto industry.
California, however, announced that it would continue with the limits, suddenly creating the possibility of a double market in the country.
Trump has rescinded California's permission to set its own limits and the case is now before the courts.
4. FOREIGN POLICY.
Tweet Diplomacy
MARÍA ANTONIA SÁNCHEZ VALLEJO, New York
Of all the promises he made in the 2016 election campaign, Donald Trump has pushed that of
America First
to the limit
, a slogan that has become the main legacy of his foreign policy: a United States alien to the world, isolationist and disdainful of conventions and organizations that make up the international community, from the Paris Climate Agreement to Unesco or the World Health Organization.
Four years after arriving at the White House, few seem the net achievements of his foreign policy, turned into tweet diplomacy and a coup of impulses with a stone in his shoe: the trade war with China, increasingly political, with sanctions against Beijing for the repression of the Uighurs in Xinjiang or the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
During his tenure he has disparaged the European Union, disqualified NATO, characterized the UN as "a club of people who meet to have fun" and, in a coup with more media result than substance, staged a principle of understanding with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
Meanwhile, he was ambiguous, or ambivalent, with respect to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, or he put himself in profile before the excesses - such as the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi- of the Saudi royal circle.
Not happy, he was about to unleash a conflict of incalculable consequences with Iran, his favorite black beast along with China, by ordering the kill of General Qassem Soleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guard, in retaliation for the attacks of pro-Iranian militias on US troops. in Iraq.
Precisely the chapter on the presence of the US military in wars where, in Trump's words, America has not lost anything, is one of the tricks it has played to win the support of public opinion, even with dubious results. , for example in Afghanistan.
In these four years, Trump has retraced the path traveled by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
It has regressed in the thaw of relations with Cuba, returning to the heavy-handed policy, but especially in the nuclear agreement with Iran, from which Trump removed the US in 2018. Iran's shadow is projected after each step that Trump's diplomacy , at the hands of his son-in-law and court advisor, Jared Kushner, has given in the Middle East, and especially in the recent agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, sponsored by Trump and from which he intends to obtain electoral revenue.
The grandly named "deal of the century," which is supposed to settle decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict and only favors one side, culminated Washington's undisguised alignment with Israel, with symbolic milestones such as the transfer of the embassy to Jerusalem, declared capital by Trump against all international resolutions.
Some discreet achievement is to his credit, such as the recent economic agreement between Serbia and Kosovo, which Trump celebrated in a tweet in which he placed the second country in the Middle East.
But Washington's decidedly proactive role in the Balkans is not new, nor is it altruistic, but is driven by the need to counteract the triumphant entry by the Chinese New Silk Road region into Europe.
With regard to Latin America, its policy has been as erratic as in the rest of the globe.
He publicly humiliated President Enrique Peña Nieto when he was still a candidate, while Juan Guaidó, recognized by 60 countries as the president in charge of Venezuela, officially supported him and privately did not spare him doubts about his leadership.
The Colombian FARC and the Nicolás Maduro regime have been their favorite targets in the region, although the imposition of successive sanctions against the Chavista leadership has been counteracted by the lack of a coherent strategy.
