The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 13 The United States has been arguing for the need to reform the WTO since well before Donald Trump unleashed his world tariff war. In 2015, Michael Froman, President Barack Obama’s trade representative, denounced the failure of the Doha Round, a major negotiation underway since 2001 but bogged down in its own ambition to reach a comprehensive agreement among all countries on every aspect of world trade. Froman’s solution was pragmatic multilateralism , capable of proceeding through sectoral agreements or between small groups of nations. Behind the arcane formulations of international law, Washington’s real accusation against the WTO, then as now, is that it has facilitated the spectacular rise of China’s industrial power. Longstanding issues Decisions on WTO reform can only come from its Ministerial Conference, held every two year...

Internationalism No. 84, February 2026 Page 6 With the announcement of an increase in military spending from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion in 2027, Donald Trump is relaunching the United States’ primacy in the rearmament cycle. This Trumpian rearmament will have to be approved by Congress, where so far only the heads of the armed forces committees have expressed their support. Regardless of whether or not these figures will be immediately reflected in the Pentagon’s budgets, they are nevertheless indicative of the strategic scenario that Washington intends to guard against. On the one hand, with 5% of its GDP, the US would ensure that its spending over the next few years exceeds the combined total of the three runners-up — Europe, China, and Russia — and in this sense, this functions primarily as insurance against the multipolar dynamic. On the other hand, in terms of American political culture, which tends to frame international issues in ...

Internationalism No. 81, November 2025 Page 11 Ursula von der Leyen justified the concessions made to Donald Trump in the Turnberry agreement at the end of July with two main arguments: it was a necessary move to avoid worse tariffs, and the EU has other cards to play. While the United States is the primary destination for European trade , wrote the president of the Brussels Commission in Le Figaro , it accounts for only about 20% of our exports of goods. That is why Europe will continue to strengthen and diversify its trade links with countries around the world . America and Asia This attempt is underway. On September 3 rd , the von der Leyen Commission proposed to the European Council, the intergovernmental body of the 27 States, to ratify both the trade agreement with the Latin American bloc, Mercosur, and a modernisation of the existing agreement with Mexico. In the EU, the Commission has centralised trade policy in a federal power that negotiates ...