Lessons learned from 2020
Here's a list of some things I got wrong about 2020 and what I’m trying to learn from it.
Now that 2020 is in hindsight, I wanted to go back and look at some of the predictions I made that turned out to be wrong. Getting better at predictions requires writing them down, making them falsifiable, and checking them later to learn from them.
Most experts agreed that someday there would be a global pandemic, but nobody including me knew that 2020 would be the year.
The first time I wrote about coronavirus was on 27 January. I wrote that from a hotel room while traveling for business in the US, having no idea it would be my final business trip of the year. I wrote that none of the countries in Latin America were prepared (correct!), and cited John Hopkins research saying that Mexico and Brazil were among the best prepared in the region. Even if that was an accurate assessment of public health, hospital capacity, and virus monitoring capabilities of those two countries, it took me a few weeks to recognize that the lack of political will and competence of the countries’ current presidents would hamper the response.
At that point, while I correctly predicted that most presidents would get a public opinion boost due to the crisis, I thought the presidents who did poorly responding to coronavirus would see their approval ratings drop. Instead, AMLO’s approval rating held steady and Bolsonaro’s increased. Though the two leaders took different approaches (in fact, on austerity vs rampant spending, they took the exact opposite approaches of what I would have predicted ahead of the crisis), they both provide a lesson in the power of populism.
More broadly, I wrote in 2019 that AMLO’s approval rating would drop as he failed on security and the economy. Statistically, there is almost zero doubt that the security situation has not improved and the economy is doing far worse than expected. But AMLO remains around 60% approval. One of the most read newsletters I wrote last year discussed how AMLO successfully uses anti-corruption rhetoric and actions to keep his approval numbers high.
My prediction for 2021 based on the lesson I learned in 2020: Mexico’s security will remain awful and the economy will underperform both the region and economists’ current expectations in 2021, but AMLO’s popularity will remain above 50%.
Protests declined under lockdown
In late 2019, I predicted that there would be more protests in 2020 and they would lead to more violence. I absolutely blame getting this one wrong on the pandemic. Having people locked down in their homes and afraid to catch the virus put a hard stop on the protest movement that was expanding in late 2019.
Protests did begin to pick back up in late 2020 and they are disruptive in many countries. The protests that occurred in Colombia in September were followed by big protests in October and November in numerous countries across the region.
My prediction for 2021 based on the lessons of 2020: Protests will be triggered by governments that attempt austerity measures. I made that same prediction about 2019 and I think it will be true again. Any government trying to seriously cut public spending is going to see an angry public backlash.
Nailed it!
There are at least a few things I got correct. While coronavirus doomed my prediction about protests, it guaranteed that I was correct in my prediction that most economies in the region would underperform their predicted levels of GDP growth in 2020. Security in Mexico remained awful; the CJNG continue to expand, aim at political targets and their expansion drives violence. Biden won the US election. I also predicted that Bolsonaro would “double down on being an idiot” after recovering from Covid and while it’s a totally subjective assessment, I’ll count that as a victory as well.
However, as someone who does predictions professionally, I prefer looking at what I got wrong. I’m going to keep writing in 2021 and while I do sometimes go into vague unprovable big-picture narratives, I also do try to write down specific and falsifiable predictions where I can. Doing my best to get it correct while risking being wrong is how I keep it interesting.
Thanks for reading
One thing I did not address here: Venezuela. I’ll write more about what I got right and wrong on Venezuela and what it means for 2021 next week in a newsletter for paying subscribers.
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