Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa spoke about the next US administration in a video broadcast at the start of the 160th-anniversary conference of Diário de Notícias, which is being held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.
After congratulating the newspaper on 160 years that “are history” and stating that “at a good time it remains, it resists”, the head of state considered that “it would be much better if this meeting today took place after the speech by the President-elect, or if you like, re-elect, of the United States” – Donald Trump, who will take office on Monday.
“Because it would be clearer what happened in his first term and in the announcements prior to the start of his second term, because it’s a new period, it’s a new period in the United States of America and in its leadership, although with a lot of similarities to the previous period of the Trump presidency,” he explained.
Rebelo de Sousa said that now “there are wars that didn’t exist”, which need to be stopped, that “Europe is different and has a crisis in its political, economic and social systems” and that “in the relationship between China and the Russian Federation, the order of factors has been reversed, it is China that is leading, and increasingly so in the future, and not the Russian Federation”.
As for what Trump’s new administration will do in this context, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa warned that “it has already come from President Trump’s previous term in office and the idea of the main adversary being China, and therefore of a treatment that distinguishes the Russian Federation from China, can be projected into the future”.
Rebelo de Sousa fears “a kind of explicit or implicit agreement with the Russian Federation, and focusing the centre of attention not on the Atlantic, not on Europe, but on the Pacific”, which he described as “an illusion” and “a mistake”.
“It’s a mistake because there is an alliance between China and the Russian Federation, and for a long time whatever is good for one is good for the other. It’s clear that China is the most preserved, profiting from the erosion of the Russian Federation itself, but above all from Western erosion of various kinds. And so it’s an illusion to forget the Atlantic, to forget Europe,” he said.
He also emphasised “Europe’s role, Europe’s connection to Africa, Europe’s connection to Latin America” and advised against the option of “forgetting all this in favour of a strategy focused, in theory, only or above all militarily, strategically, economically, on China and the Pacific”.
On the other hand, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa pointed to “a new factor, which is the large multinational groups that appear to act as intermediaries between the great powers”, which illustrates “the concentration of economic power in the hands of a very few, who add political power to economic power”.
“They do business in China, they do business in Russia and they have influence in the United States and the rest of America. So they mediate to solve problems, they buy, sell, intercede, intervene in economic, social and political life, particularly in Europe, answer to no-one, have no control or scrutiny whatsoever,” he said, without naming anyone.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa noted that “this is new and has little to do with those who have long defended economic freedom, both domestically and internationally”.
The head of state stressed how the international situation “depends a lot on the new style of leadership, the new cycle of American policy” and “the projection of Europe, the forgetting of Europe, or the division of Europe”, which could be “in a more difficult position, so that, at the same time, we can face problems such as investing more in defence, but recovering economically, investing more in knowledge, but not neglecting security, not breaking concerning post-Ukraine”.