The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 13 The Supreme Court has rejected Donald Trump's attempt to impose tariffs by invoking emergency powers. The ruling and the US president's counter-reaction, imposing a universal tariff of 10%, open up unpredictable scenarios. This will be discussed in the coming months, between now and the midterm elections. For the moment, this plunges all the agreements signed by the administration to date into uncertainty. Last June, we predicted a season of flourishing free-trade agreements in the winter of the crisis in the world order , in response to the tariff war declared by Trump against the whole world. Since then, the EU has announced agreements with Indonesia, the South American bloc Mercosur, and India: a historic hat-trick that will improve European access to markets with a combined population of 2 billion. The European Commission is pursuing other negotiations, especially in Asia, and is looking towards con...

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 2 The pace of development of the Indian Giant is one of the major variables weighing on the Asian balance of power and, consequently, the global one. The possibility of counterbalancing the Chinese Giant depends on it. If India were to maintain a sustained pace, it could narrow the window of opportunity available to the Chinese Dragon to establish itself in Asia before the regional balance becomes less favourable—or, in any case, before other powers can rely more heavily on the Indian Elephant to condition it. The old metropolises of imperialism could therefore encourage India's rise, at least until the second Asian imperialist marauder presents them with the bill. Harsh Pant, vice president of the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, reports on this from the subcontinent's point of view. The think tank was founded in 1990 by the Ambani family, owners of Ind...

Internationalism No. 84, February 2026 Page 10 With the leverage of reciprocal tariffs, announced on liberation day in April and implemented from August, Donald Trump has so far wrested around fifteen advantageous bilateral agreements with the United Kingdom, the EU, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Australia, Argentina, and other smaller countries in Asia, Latin America, and Europe. Due to its unique characteristics, the agreement with Malaysia stands out and is considered by the White House a model, demonstrating the strategic ambitions of the tariff war. An Article 5 At the end of October, the Malaysian government hosted the 47 th summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), celebrating the accession of East Timor as its 11 th member. At the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur, Trump announced two framework agreements with Vietnam and Thailand, and two reciprocal trade agreements with Malaysia and Cambodia. These results went relatively ...

Internationalism No. 82, December 2025 Page 4 On September 26 th , The Hindu wrote: The global chessboard has shifted. Supply chains are in motion. China is repositioning capital. Southeast Asia is building alternative corridors. India is claiming a role in the Indo-Pacific equation, but its export architecture still rests on a few coastal enclaves . The newspaper, based in Chennai (Tamil Nadu), outlines Asian capital movements that show that India is lagging behind in the internationalisation of its key sectors. The four States of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka alone account for over 70% of all Indian goods exports, while the most populous States — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh — remain on the sidelines, responsible for only 5% of foreign trade combined. In the Indian debate, the export of goods is treated as an index of the international competitiveness of States. This is tied to the difficulty of attracti...

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 in the system of States. Therefore, while it is difficult to assess the real significa...