Felipe Calderón is a Mexican politician, lawyer, author, and former president of Mexico who has a net worth of $5 million. Calderón served as president of Mexico from 2006 to 2012, becoming the second consecutive president from the National Action Party, or PAN, after Vicente Fox. Before reaching the presidency, Calderón spent decades climbing through the PAN's ranks, serving as a legislator, national party president, director of Mexico's development bank Banobras, and secretary of energy.

Calderón won the 2006 presidential election in one of the closest contests in Mexican history, defeating Andrés Manuel López Obrador by roughly 234,000 votes, or 0.56 percentage points. His presidency was defined in large part by the decision to deploy the military and federal security forces against Mexico's powerful drug cartels. The strategy became highly controversial as violence increased and human-rights organizations documented serious abuses by members of the security forces. His administration also governed through the global financial crisis and the 2009 H1N1 outbreak, expanded public-health coverage, hosted the 2010 United Nations climate conference in Cancún, and enacted Mexico's General Climate Change Law in 2012.

After leaving office, Calderón became active in international climate, economic, and sustainability organizations, spent time at Harvard Kennedy School, served on corporate boards, wrote books, and became a paid public speaker. He left the PAN in 2018 after nearly four decades with the party and subsequently participated with his wife, Margarita Zavala, in an unsuccessful effort to establish a new political party.

Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa was born on August 18, 1962, in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico. Politics was part of his life from childhood. His father, Luis Calderón Vega, was a writer, political activist, and one of the founders of the National Action Party, which had been established in 1939 as an opposition to the long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party. Calderón began participating in PAN political activities while still young and formally joined the party in 1980.

Calderón studied law at the Escuela Libre de Derecho in Mexico City. He later earned a master's degree in economics from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, better known as ITAM, and a master's degree in public administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Harvard lists Calderón as a 2000 graduate of its Mid-Career Master in Public Administration program.

Calderón became the first leader of the PAN's reorganized national youth organization during the late 1980s. In 1988, at age 25, he won a seat in the Assembly of Representatives of the Federal District, an early predecessor of Mexico City's present-day legislature. He was elected to Mexico's Chamber of Deputies in 1991 and became secretary-general of the PAN's national executive committee in 1993.

After unsuccessfully running for governor of Michoacán in 1995, Calderón was elected national president of the PAN in 1996 at the age of 33. He led the party for three years and later returned to the Chamber of Deputies following the 2000 election that brought Vicente Fox to the presidency and ended more than seven decades of uninterrupted presidential rule by the PRI.

Fox appointed Calderón director of Banobras, Mexico's state-owned development bank for infrastructure and public services, in February 2003. Seven months later, Calderón became secretary of energy. He resigned in May 2004 amid tensions with Fox after political allies publicly promoted Calderón as a prospective presidential candidate. He subsequently launched a campaign for the PAN nomination and defeated better-known rivals in the party's 2005 primary process.

Calderón faced López Obrador, the candidate of a left-wing coalition, in the July 2006 presidential election. According to the final vote count certified by Mexico's electoral authorities, Calderón received 14,916,927 votes, or 35.89%, while López Obrador received 14,683,096, or 35.33%. The margin was just 233,831 votes.

López Obrador and his supporters challenged the result and alleged irregularities. Mexico's Federal Electoral Tribunal reviewed the challenge and ultimately confirmed Calderón's victory. Calderón took office on December 1, 2006, amid significant political protests and polarization surrounding the election.

Within weeks of becoming president, Calderón sent thousands of military personnel into areas affected by organized crime, beginning a major expansion of the federal government's campaign against drug cartels. The armed forces, federal police, and other security agencies increasingly conducted operations that had traditionally been civilian law-enforcement responsibilities. Mexico also expanded security cooperation with the United States through the Mérida Initiative, which began during the administration of George W. Bush.

The security campaign became the defining and most disputed aspect of Calderón's presidency. Drug-trafficking organizations were fragmented and numerous senior cartel figures were captured or killed, but Mexico also experienced sharply increasing violence among criminal groups and between cartels and the government. Human Rights Watch reported in 2011 that its research in five Mexican states found evidence strongly suggesting security-force participation in more than 170 cases of torture, 39 disappearances, and 24 extrajudicial killings since Calderón took office. The organization argued that the government's heavy reliance on military forces contributed to serious human-rights problems and widespread impunity.

The long-term consequences of the strategy remain the subject of political and academic debate in Mexico. What is clear is that the militarization of the fight against organized crime that expanded dramatically under Calderón continued, in various forms, under subsequent Mexican presidents.

Calderón also governed Mexico through the global financial crisis. Because of Mexico's close economic relationship with the United States, the country was hit particularly hard during the 2008-2009 downturn. The International Monetary Fund reported that Mexican economic output contracted by approximately 6.5% in 2009. Mexico responded with fiscal stimulus, interest-rate reductions by the independent central bank, financial-market support, and other measures, and economic growth resumed later in 2009.

His administration continued expanding the Seguro Popular public-health system and introduced a program providing health insurance to children born after the beginning of his term. Calderón's government also pursued tax, pension, energy, and infrastructure measures, although the scope and results of those policies remained subjects of political disagreement.

Environmental policy became another significant element of Calderón's presidency. Mexico hosted the United Nations' COP16 climate conference in Cancún in 2010. The conference produced the Cancún Agreements, which established a series of international climate commitments and mechanisms, including the framework for the Green Climate Fund.

In June 2012, Calderón signed Mexico's General Climate Change Law, establishing a national legal framework for climate-change mitigation and adaptation.

Calderón completed his six-year term in 2012 and was succeeded by Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI.

After leaving the presidency, Calderón moved to the United States for a period and became the inaugural Angelopoulos Global Public Leaders Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. He subsequently devoted a substantial portion of his work to climate change, sustainable economic development, and international policy.

Calderón became a member of the board of the World Resources Institute and has chaired the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. He is also president of the Sustainable Human Development Foundation. The FIA, the international governing body for automobile racing, has listed him as president of its Environment and Sustainability Commission.

He has also worked as an author and public speaker. His books include "Los retos que enfrentamos," published in 2014, and the memoir "Decisiones difíciles," published in 2020.

Calderón left the PAN in 2018 following disagreements with the party's leadership. He and Margarita Zavala subsequently supported the creation of México Libre, a political organization that sought recognition as a national political party. Mexican election authorities denied the organization party registration in 2020.

Calderón joined the board of U.S. energy company Avangrid in July 2016. Securities and Exchange Commission filings show that he received $200,000 in director compensation in 2017 and another $200,000 in 2018. He resigned from the board effective December 31, 2018.

His other post-presidential income has included speaking engagements, academic and advisory work, and organizational positions. Calderón has acknowledged that paid speaking became one of his sources of income after leaving public office.

Calderón's government salary was publicly disclosed. The proposed 2012 federal budget listed his monthly income before benefits at 208,548 Mexican pesos. Including compensation and benefits, his total annual gross remuneration was listed at approximately 4.2 million pesos, with annual net compensation of approximately 3.38 million pesos.

Public financial declarations also provide a rare look at Calderón's finances while he was president. A review of the filings by "El Universal" found that Calderón and Zavala reported combined assets of more than 17.1 million pesos at the end of his presidency in early 2013, compared with approximately 7.1 million pesos when he entered office. The assets included real estate, investments, personal property, and a vehicle.

Like other former Mexican presidents at the time, Calderón was also entitled to a government-funded presidential pension after leaving office. In 2017, he announced that he would donate his pension payments to a children's cancer organization. Mexico subsequently eliminated the special pension system for former presidents.

One of the most consequential later developments connected to Calderón's administration involved Genaro García Luna, who served as Calderón's secretary of public security and was one of the most powerful officials directing Mexico's anti-cartel operations. In 2023, a federal jury in the United States convicted García Luna of participating in a continuing criminal enterprise, cocaine-trafficking conspiracies, and making false statements after prosecutors presented evidence that he had accepted millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. In October 2024, he was sentenced to 460 months, or more than 38 years, in federal prison and ordered to pay a $2 million fine.

Calderón has said that while he was president he never received verifiable evidence that García Luna was involved in criminal activity. The conviction nevertheless renewed scrutiny of the security institutions and officials who played central roles in Calderón's anti-cartel strategy.

Felipe Calderón married lawyer and politician Margarita Zavala in 1993. The two had met through their involvement in the PAN, where Zavala also built a long political career. They have three children, María, Luis Felipe, and Juan Pablo.

Zavala served in Mexico's Chamber of Deputies and later pursued a national political career of her own. She sought the presidency as an independent candidate in the 2018 election before withdrawing from the race ahead of voting. Calderón and Zavala have remained active in Mexican public affairs following his presidency.