The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 81, November 2025 Page 14 From the series Industry and pharmaceuticals The trade dispute between the United States and the European Union also affects the pharmaceutical sector, with a likely direct impact on the cost of treatment on both sides of the Atlantic. With the Joint Declaration of August 21 st , the White House and the European Commission announced that pharmaceutical products will also be subject to a maximum tariff of 15%. Generic drugs, including their chemical ingredients and precursors, are excluded and should not be subject to duties. Generic medicines, which are no longer protected by patents and are much cheaper than branded ones , make up the majority of medical prescriptions in the United States. A 2023 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) report estimated their share at 91%. Tariffs will therefore only affect branded products, which are more innovative, expensive, and still enjoy patent protection. The producti...

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 10 Donald Trump has always maintained that trade wars are easy to win . The first six months of his second term show that they are not even easy to start. In addition to the new 10% universal tariff on all exports to the US, on April 2 nd – Liberation Day – President Trump ordered aggressive reciprocal tariffs against some 60 countries, only to immediately postpone them for three months when the first worrying tremors hit the stock, debt, and dollar markets. One month, ten agreements To reassure Wall Street, the White House promised 90 agreements in those 90 days, offering a discount on reciprocal tariffs to the threatened nations in exchange for concessions, such as the purchase of US arms and energy, commitments to heavy investment in the United States, and greater market openness to American goods...

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 5 From the series Asian giants Trends in rearmament spending and comparisons of military equipment are increasingly set to dominate coverage of the contention between powers in the crisis in the world order . The military factor has entered the strategic debate, accompanied by a wealth of figures and technical details. The increase in military spending as a percentage of GDP represents a widespread sign of the rearmament cycle at this juncture, but spending alone cannot entirely explain the situation, given the qualitatively different natures of the arsenals being compared. Nor are comparisons between this or that type of weapon useful in themselves, because ultimately all weapons are only ever used in combination with the complex military means available to a power, either in alliance or in conflict with other powers i...

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Pages 1 and 2 In current Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, appeasement stands for cowardly and illusory pacification, as exemplified by the Munich Agreement of 1938, which conceded to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia without stopping the march towards world war. Were Shigeru Ishiba, Ursula von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron, and Friedrich Merz really, as has been said, the Neville Chamberlains of the tariff war, accepting appeasement on the 15% tariff in an ignominious surrender to Donald Trump's blackmail? And has Trump really revealed himself in Anchorage, Alaska, to be an appeaser towards Vladimir Putin? Was it, finally, only the firmness of the Europeans at the Washington summit which convinced Trump to remain as one of the guarantors of Ukraine's security? The plague of television and social media diplomacy feeds on simplistic and propa...

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 9 In January 2017, as soon as he took office in the White House, Donald Trump signalled the new trade policy of the United States with two immediate moves: the exit from the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) and the project for a wall on the border with Mexico. These were accompanied by the threat to abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). That thunderous debut now seems almost moderate, compared to the flurry of arrogant announcements and orders with which his second presidency has begun. Multiple fronts In just a few weeks, Trump has deployed an impressive and omni-directional arsenal of tariffs, making no distinction between allies and adversaries. The first targets were imports from Canada and Mexico, the US’s biggest trading partners. These 25% tariffs were immediately put on hold for a month, in exchange for symbolic concessions from the two neighbouring governments, aimed at countering the suppos...