“One cannot live in the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration is the reason for subordination”, said Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the Davos Forum in January. And it is evident: global integration implies subordination to the big ones, the United States and China. Consequently, the strategy of second-tier states can be none other than to collaborate to ward off dependence; this is the policy that the BRICS practice, with success, and it must also be that of Europe.The US and China are preparing for economic confrontation. The former due to the scarcity of rare earths, and the latter because they aspire for the renminbi to become a reserve and trade currency, like the dollar. Today, the dollar represents 57% of central banks' reserves. In the new post-globalization commercial environment, which will be one of fragmentation and confrontation, even the big players will have to deploy trade weapons to protect themselves.Donald Trump assures that he will bend nations through tariffs because the US market is the most important in the world for imports. It is, but it accounts for only 13% of global imports. From a global perspective, not selling to the US will have little impact on any state's exports: in relation to world trade, trade with the US is small. Even Canada, with trade traditionally linked to the US, does not suffer particularly from American tariffs. It has found alternative markets; hence its approach to Europe.Tariffs only have important effects if trade is concentrated on a scarce good. When Trump imposed tariffs on most states in April 2025, China responded by limiting the export of rare earths. Ford temporarily closed some factories due to a lack of raw materials and Raytheon had problems maintaining the production of Tomahawk missiles. Within weeks, the US reduced its tariffs on China.Let's look at another case. When the US department's import rules tightened, China limited the export of equipment containing technological components. The US was forced to give China freedom to buy highly sophisticated material; for example, Nvidia chips. Thus, the US allowed the trade of its most strategic product with its greatest competitor. The gap between what Trump says and what he does continues to grow.

One of the main arguments against the European Commission's plan to "create the world's largest free market" with Mercosur is the claim by many agricultural and environmental organizations that food grown with pesticides banned within the EU will enter Europe. But behind this unfair competition lies a key question: who produces these banned toxins that are then used in South America? The answer is paradoxical: a very significant portion is manufactured in Europe itself..

If we could travel back to Barcelona in the year 2000 for a few hours, we would immediately notice the profound changes the city has undergone in the last 25 years. Perhaps at first glance they wouldn't be as spectacular as those of the previous quarter of a century, 1975-2000, but the small details would be. If we entered the subway, for example, we wouldn't see anyone looking at a cell phone, but perhaps we would see the occasional newspaper or magazine. We also wouldn't see as many tourists as we do now, although there would already be some (we've gone from three million a year to 15 million). Nor would we see as much immigrant population (from 75,000 people to 600,000).

Twenty years ago I participated in the collective work What moves us? Six values up for debate (Mina), coordinated by the late Josep Maria Terricabras. I was assigned the section on democratic values. In one conversation, an essay by Kenichi Ohmae, published a decade earlier, in 1995, came up, analyzing the decline of the nation state. Terricabras told me: "It's very interesting, but it doesn't contribute anything to us [Catalans]. I think he was right. end of the nation state It generated considerable debate, which I don't know if it's still relevant today. It raised an important question: the durability and relevance, or not, of the nation state in a globalized world. The nation state has often been perceived as an immutable entity, forgetting that its historically very recent formation. Although it was a pillar for overcoming feudalism and promoting Enlightenment ideals, the idea could be problematic. Blindly adhering to the concept led to Jacobin ideas or worse. However, according to Ohmae, the question wasn't exactly whether the nation state is good or bad in itself, but whether it still remains a functional and reasonable structure.

A few years before we entered the 21st century, the free market expanded throughout the world. We call this phenomenon globalization: a historical period in which countries became interconnected like never before, capitalism became the hegemonic economic system, and technology facilitated the strengthening of supraterritorial ties, generating exchanges that had a direct impact, for example, on the industrialization of territories or the use of languages in everyday life. These days I'm wondering: can we now speak of globalization in the past tense?

The major problem in the current world is that there is more economic and communication globalization than political globalization. However, the institutions for global governance enjoy robust bad health and are increasingly active in facing new challenges. Next week, in the Bavarian Alps, there will be the annual summit meeting of the Group of Seven, the closest thing to a world government that has ever existed; it will focus on surveilling the previous climate accord on decarbonization, together with the pandemic and Ukraine. Immediately afterward, in the second half of the week, the NATO summit will gather in Madrid, on the 40^th anniversary of Spain’s membership, to approve a new Strategic Concept for the next ten years.