The peso’s nervous devaluation that put it over 20 units for one dollar came to a screeching halt Monday night after it became clear that Hillary Clinton first upstaged and then wiped Donald Trump out of the TV screen.
Though the Clinton-Trump debate got worldwide coverage and newspapers all over the world awarded Clinton the victory, the debate meant a lot more to Mexicans who spent last week worrying as to how Hillary would do against The Donald.
In fact, predictions were — as published in this column — that should Trump win this debate the peso would come tumbling down to unpredictable lows hurting even more the already battered economy of middle class Mexicans who usually take the brunt of a sudden devaluation.
Fortunately, things were the other way around and by midday Tuesday the peso, which closed Monday evening selling at 20.21, sold at 19.75 and was being purchased at 19.12.
Now it remains to be seen how much further down the peso will go, as the dollar was being clearly overvalued by speculators, who trusted that their hero The Donald would further trump up the dollar value with his constant tirades against a nation that’s really done nothing to him or the United States and in fact can’t figure out what this dude’s got against it.
During the debate Trump mentioned the word “Mexico” on eight occasions and four of them were aimed at bashing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), even claiming — in one more of his constant lies — that it had been Bill Clinton who signed it into being.
Hillary Clinton did not respond on this particular issue, but a reality check has it that it was George Bush senior and then former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari who conceived NAFTA as a way to achieve several bi-national goals such as helping Mexico to lift its until then closed economy and have it latch on to the United States and Canada as a regional industrialization effort, which by the way, is being achieved.
But in the debate Trump insisted that “it was your husband” who was to blame for NAFTA — Hillary should have retaliated, but she was busier sidetracking the brute-looking Republican presidential candidate nominee. Again, by the time Bill Clinton was sworn in, NAFTA was a done deal.
I must also say that Hillary has honed her debating competence over the years. During the 2008 race for the Democratic Party nomination, she ran nose to nose with Barack Obama having with him a total of 22 grueling debates. She did not like losing to then Senator Obama, but in the end had to concede and even her husband Bill Clinton saw that their arguments were so much alike that he even suggested that she be vice-president. That, however, was not what she wanted.
And lest we forget her recent, and also grueling, debates with Bernie Sanders showing an outcome that has her with a mouth-wide grin.
And grinning over the outcome of the debate too in Mexico are some politicians such as President Enrique Peña Nieto who always celebrates the revaluation of the peso and in this case because Hillary did what he is accused of having been unable to do, pummel Trump good and solid.
Yet the end of the road — election-day Nov. 8 — is not anywhere near and there are two more debates in which surely Trump will get closer to his nasty nature and even bring up the Lewinsky Affair into the remaining two debates as he hinted he didn’t do “for respect of Chelsea.” Gimme a break, Trump doesn’t even respect himself, much the less the Clintons’ daughter. But then, in the upcoming debates he’s ready to sling mud and forget about the real issues affecting the United States and its relationship with Mexico in particular, and the world at large.
But what seems inevitable is that the peso has gained a solid exchange parity foothold for the months to come which is very good news for Mexico.
