"Trump understands resentment toward the elite better because he has experienced it firsthand."

Esteban Hernández is a political correspondent for El Confidencial and one of its most widely read and influential analysts. His latest book, "The Political Economy of the Americas," will be published next week. The New Spirit of the World: Politics and Geopolitics in the Trump Era (Deusto). In it, he revisits many of the themes he addresses in his columns and in previous books: the decline of the middle classes, the crisis of the liberal order and globalization, the emergence of new ideological mutations disrupting the political landscape, and the interactions between economics and geopolitics. But in this case, as the subtitle suggests, he approaches them from the perspective of Donald Trump 's second term . And with the conviction that change is no longer just something vague on the horizon, but the new normal.

QUESTION: In this book, you talk about the impoverishment of the middle classes in the West. But you argue that this decline hasn't generated a revolutionary movement, as has happened at other times in history. Rather, it's generated a desire for preservation, to avoid further loss, which in many ways is conservative.

ANSWER: It's one of the aspects that explain the transformations we're experiencing in politics. There's a discontent, sometimes latent, sometimes very explicit, reflected in the elections and the frequent changes of government we're seeing. But we're not in a revolutionary moment; we don't want to change everything suddenly and achieve a new society. We're not in a utopian moment. It's a moment in which we want to change things to maintain, if not the way of life, at least the promises we've received. For me, a definitive fact in Spain and Europe is that more and more young people, from the upper-middle and upper classes, feel that the promises they were made, such as that they would have a standard of living similar to that of their parents, are no longer being fulfilled. They've done what they were told, they've studied what they were told, but when they reach the end of the road, they find they haven't achieved even half of what they expected. If that happens in the middle and upper classes, imagine what happens in the rest. The desire for a more or less stable society, with opportunities, with a certain level of security in life, I believe is at the heart of many of the demands being made.

Q. And you say the right is better interpreting this discontent. In part, because it better understands the idea of ​​"sovereignty," which we now seem to yearn for.

A. They're two different things. On the one hand, the left and progressivism are about the future, about a path to a new place, a continuous improvement in your life prospects and living conditions. Progressivism has always thought of the world as an ascending line. When that line breaks, the idea of ​​the future disappears from the imagination. But right now, there's no progressive option grounded in the present. It continues to think about improving the future. And the right has turned against that; it focuses on the present.

And, on the other hand, yes, a certain right wing has established a kind of connection between the country's destiny and the improvement of citizens' living conditions. In the US elections , the Democrats said: things are going more or less well, but if the Republicans win, this will become a dictatorship. It was a purely defensive position. The Republicans, meanwhile, said: the progressives have failed, and if we make this country great again, you'll live better. The Republicans' position was to improve the present, to correct the problems. It's still a promise. And promises have to be kept. We'll see where all this ends. But between the two positions, I think society is thinking much more about the second. It sees it as a way out.

"Progressivism has always conceived of the world as an ascending line. When that line breaks, the idea of ​​a future disappears."

Q. You say that when society looks for a way out, it chooses figures of last resort. Throughout history, these figures have sometimes been military dictators. Other times, nonpartisan technocrats. Why someone with Trump's profile now?

A. Just as the military ceased to be trusted as an emergency solution, technocrats are now seen as part of the problem, not as a solution. And Trump is radically opposed to technocracy. It's not surprising that in a time like this, a businessman is the one who generates trust in a society.

Q: But even though he disguises himself as anti-elite, he's also elite. He inherited wealth from a wealthy father. He studied at an elite university. He's a millionaire. Many of those around him are other millionaires who've had jobs on Wall Street or Silicon Valley.

A. In the past, there was a separation between the aristocracy and the financial bourgeois world. And in that context of struggle between the two, the aristocracy tended to rely on the peasants. Now, something similar is happening. And that's important to keep in mind, because the American moment, the European moment, is a moment of confrontation between two elite classes. There, we, as a people, are playing a very limited role. Trump belongs to the despised elite. He's a builder, not a great Silicon Valley innovator like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. He's not a great Wall Street financier, he's not Warren Buffett. He's a guy who builds buildings with a lot of gold. That's why Trump understands the resentment against the elite better, because he's experienced it personally. He's someone capable of opposing, capable of tearing things down. And he conveys that now we need new figures, with more energy, with more determination, with fewer qualms, to carry out the plans that the United States truly needs.

Q. Trump reiterates that among those plans is the reindustrialization of the country. There's also a lot of talk about reindustrialization in Europe. But do you think it's feasible? Isn't appealing to the industrial past a form of nostalgia?

A. Having a financially stable life, with a salary that allows you to buy a house, meet basic needs, and ensure your children have a good education and are well cared for is a common aspiration. And since we've lost our future, we tend to dwell on the past. That's why we often bring it up. Do you think it's possible for another economic system to meet the needs of ordinary citizens? Absolutely. Now, if it was possible to move all the factories to other countries, they can bring them back.

Q: What do you think? Do you think it's feasible to manufacture the iPhone in the United States? In a recent survey, many Americans said they wanted the industry to return to their country, but also that they weren't willing to work in a factory.

A. Factories aren't leaving the United States or Spain because of production needs. They're leaving because of a need for profit in a context of deep integration, where there are fewer and fewer companies. It's much more profitable for shareholders to take the factories. Well, for shareholders and for the Chinese Communist Party.

Q. That's true. But we've achieved decades of inflation-free and consumption-growth thanks to low import prices.

A. You've been able to have a cheap shirt or a television, yes, but everything essential has become more expensive. So have energy, education, and housing. The United States has established its hegemony with cheap manufacturing in China. Companies had high returns that went to shareholders, but all the money invested there returned to the United States in the form of capital that was converted intoinvestments or bonds. However, the middle and working classes have lost their standard of living. Because a good part of that investment has gone into real estate, into speculative elements that have made the most important goods more expensive. I have cheap shirts, okay, but I don't have an apartment because I can't afford it. That's been the big trap.

Because, on the one hand, the quality of life of the Western middle classes has deteriorated. And, on the other, the strategic capabilities of states have deteriorated. And that's the essential point. In many states, like the United States, they don't have the material they need, starting with bullets. They are energy-dependent. They can't maintain hegemony because they don't have the necessary tools at their disposal. This has also been seen in Europe. Putin invades Ukraine and challenges the continent. But Europe can't supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs because it doesn't have them. If the United States withdraws support, Europe can give it money, but not weapons. And war isn't fought with money alone.

So global construction has not only harmed the working class, but also the strategic capabilities of states, to the point that when someone challenges them, they can't respond. That's the element Trump is trying to respond to. Europe is trying, but we'll see.

"Europe cannot supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs because it doesn't have them."

Q. You say the European model was solid and beneficial, but now it's a fairy tale full of "moralism and fantasy."

A. Since World War II, there have been two eras in Europe, plus the one we're experiencing now. First, one of reconstruction, growth, and consolidation of the welfare state, which lasted until Richard Nixon ended the dollar-gold parity because he believed Europeans were diverting themselves from the needs of the United States. The second stage came with Reagan and Thatcher, and then with the fall of the Wall and globalization. This put us in a very different position. In the Spanish case, we felt we were moving toward the future, that we were heading toward Europe. But then the 2008 crisis hit, and from then on, Europe's foundations began to decline, its economic power and its influence in the world fell. In this third phase, we find ourselves with a nostalgic desire to retain the elements of the second phase. Simply because they are morally superior. We want to continue observing the Global South from a kind of vantage point, as if we were the civilized ones and they weren't. But now an Indian might think his state is more important than that of the United Kingdom. That it has more money and more power. Europe aspires to the world's support against Russia because it has violated the rules of international law. But then the Palestinian case comes along, and the rest of the world sees that it has a moral double standard. Europe wants to preserve the previous order, the order of the global era, because it thinks it's morally better. But politics isn't about moralizing; it's about many other things.

Q: Your book is realist. It doesn't make moral judgments about what's happening. But you come from the left, and much of what's happening coincides with the desires of the left over the last 30 years: undoing globalization, more self-sufficient societies, more industrial policy, less liberalism . Do you view what's happening sympathetically?

A. I like to respect the reader. For me, it's important to put enough analytical elements on the table to better understand what's happening. Then, they will decide what their vision is and what they think is right and what is wrong. Regarding the second point, it seems to me that this liberal era has been very anti-liberal. The existing economic liberalism is very different from the liberalism of books. It's like "actually existing socialism," as they used to say, which didn't look much like the promised socialism. The current liberalism is an element of large power structures that condition the economic life of most operators: workers, consumers, small and medium-sized businesses. Everything related to the productive world is subordinated to logics and orders that have very little to do with classical liberalism. We are now in a different time. Whether we like it or not, we have entered an era of rupture of global ties and national consolidation. Whether we like it or not, we will have to play that game in the coming years. And many aspects of existing economic liberalism will have to be sacrificed to generate social stability.