Among the rapid and profound changes taking place in the world economy is the breakdown of many dogmas of the golden age of liberalism. The fundamental principles that were established in the Washington Consensus of the end of the 20th century in the West of the world, minimal state intervention, fiscal rigidity, labour market flexibility, free trade, are recently being called into question. Climate change, digitalisation, the explosion of the pandemic and the success of the Chinese economic model have brought to the surface the limits of liberal globalization so far.

Last week in May the G7 countries met in Japan to prevent the breakdown of economic and political relations with China due to cross-economic interests. Major Western leaders have been forced to reduce the risk of relations with China from the concept of decoupling. The global economy is closing the era of single-leadership multilateralism in the United States. The multiple poles surrounding the continental zones are emerging and China's shadow to the only American hegemony is increasingly evident. The global framework of economic ties between peoples is not in doubt, but many lines of initiation and policy of liberalism in western countries in recent decades, with exceptions.

In EE.UU., during the time of Donald Trump, the priorities of international economic policy began to change, and the concept of national security and climate change with Joe Biden have become the axes of economic strategy. Ignoring the public debt of orthodox liberalism or concerns about the fiscal deficit, with the entry into force of the America first slogan, they have put at the centre active industrial policy, the importance of supply chains, employment and technology.

To this end, extraordinary economic policy measures, such as tariffs, subsidies and sanctions, have been launched, with emphasis on investment. These are all the instruments and measures that China has been using for decades, leading the way for economic intervention. For example, three trillion dollars will be subsidized in the fight against climate change. They also provide for the strengthening of the public good, for example in the case of semiconductors and strategic raw materials, through protectionism.

In this new geostrategic and political context, the European Union (EU) is pursuing the change of direction of US economic policy in a timely and concise manner. Orthodox liberalism, represented by the hawks of Germany and the Netherlands, continues to address its rigid strategy, as demonstrated by the Ecofin meeting on 14 March. It worked hard and committed itself to re-establishing the Stability and Growth Pact. It recalls that this pact imposes fiscal rigour on the EU and limits the use of the budget, which deepened in the recession of the decade of 2010, and which at the time of the pandemic was suspended by the gravity of the situation.

The European Union will return to the submission of tax rules in 2024, becoming a global strength of liberalism. It remains to be seen whether we are on the verge of a new wave of austerity, but, as in the US, the risk that its strategic economic autonomy and decarbonisation will be in the background if the debt objective and deficit control are not removed from the front line.