Globalization vs. Protectionism: Competing Visions, Shared Challenges,: a debate between Simón Levy and Mariano Bernardez

In a high-level discussion titled "Globalization vs. Protectionism: Competing Visions, Shared Challenges," Mariano Bernardez and Simón Levy examined the forces reshaping global trade and economic strategy.

Simón Levy presented "Trade Wars or Growth Engines: Trump and the Silk Road — The Decisive Battle Against Chinese Hegemony," arguing that strategic trade policies are essential to counterbalance rising Chinese influence and safeguard national interests.

Mariano Bernardez responded with "The Real Stakes of Protectionism," highlighting the long-term economic, technological, and social costs of isolationist policies and making the case for open markets as engines of growth and innovation.

Mariano Bernardez

Mariano Bernardez is Executive Director of the Kaufman Center for Performance and Social Innovation and CEO of the Performance Improvement Institute. He advises governments, Fortune 500 companies, and international organizations on competitiveness, innovation, and sustainable growth. An accomplished author and consultant, Bernardez specializes in aligning business strategy with social performance and value creation.

Simón Levy

Simón Levy is a board member of the Global Center for Risk and Innovation and AI 2030, and a member of the UN Future Forum. Named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, he drives initiatives at the intersection of technology, risk, and social development, with a focus on innovation ecosystems and artificial intelligence.

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Trump and the Silk Road: The Decisive Battle Against Chinese Hegemony

By Simón Levy

It's not a treaty, a free trade agreement, or a physical power network. While the United States raises tariff walls, China builds highways, ports, and railways that span continents and abolishes customs.

The strategy is simple and lethal: infrastructure, debt, and trade. And when a country already depends on you to move goods, you no longer need to convince it, just supply it.

This is how the Silk Road works: it turns cement into influence, and loans into obedience. More than 150 countries, 3,000 projects, and $1.3 trillion later, China no longer asks how trade is conducted.It decides.

That's why Trump has returned to stop it at all costs. That's why he has dynamited globalization to rewrite sovereignty: whoever controls the roads, controls the destiny.

Why does Trump want to stop the Silk Road?

Because he understands it.

Because he knows it's not an infrastructure project. It's an instrument of power.

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is not an economic plan. It's a geopolitical weapon.

More than 150 countries have signed agreements with China to receive infrastructure in exchange for debt, influence, technology... and silence.

Since 2013, China has invested more than $1.3 trillion in more than 3,000 projects, from a highway in Montenegro that left the country in debt for decades to a mega port in Chancay, Peru, that gives Beijing direct access to the South Pacific.

Trump sees clearly what many still refuse to accept: the Silk Road is China's master plan to replace American leadership, without firing a single bullet.

China's real move: infrastructure first, trade later

China is not building highways; it is building dependency.

He's not funding ports; he's designing the new map of global trade.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is not simply a foreign investment program. It is an economic model of geopolitical power. Its architecture follows a very precise logic:

First, the infrastructure.

Railways, ports, pipelines, bridges, satellites, fiber optics. They don't just connect geographies. They connect economies to the Chinese model.

Then, the debt.

Hardly any country can pay in cash what Beijing invests. Then comes Chinese financing. State-owned banks like the China Development Bank and EximBank lend on soft terms… at first. But if no repayment is made, strategic assets are negotiated: ports, licenses, logistics bases, and diplomatic votes.

Then, trade.

Once the infrastructure is built, China guarantees that its companies can sell their products, invest in their services, and open markets without the need for treaties.

And the most brilliant: tariff evasion.

When the US imposes trade barriers, China responds with logistics. Chinese goods enter third countries where BRI infrastructure exists, are assembled locally, and then exported to the world as domestic products.

It is a circular architecture: infrastructure → debt → trade → power.

Once the work is completed, a permit is no longer required to sell. The distribution channel is in place.

What's at stake isn't the products. It's the supply chains.

China's masterstroke is that it no longer regards trade as a treaty between governments but as a physical network of movement, storage, and assembly.

Instead of multilateral agreements, it has logistics corridors.

Instead of customs, it has free zones under its influence.

Instead of competing with businesses, build the roads businesses need.

This isn't just about development. It's about long-term commercial dominance.

That's why Trump wants to stop the Silk Road.

Because you know that once the network is built, there's no way to kick China out of the game. You can't impose tariffs on infrastructure you don't control. And you can't sanction a system that no longer depends on yours.

How is Trump blocking China's advance in 2025?

It's not just about tariffs anymore.

How is Trump blocking China's advance in 2025?

It's not just about tariffs anymore.

That was the first act. Now we're in the middle of the final scene.

Financing in exchange for the breakup

Trump isn't competing with bulldozers, but with checkbooks.

It's offering BRI countries the same thing as China… but without the eternal debt trap.

And with one clear condition: “Break with China, and we'll finance you.”

Panama, following direct pressure from Washington, left the Silk Road.

Colombia, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, and Paraguay are negotiating to strengthen their ties with the U.S. and freeze trade agreements with China.

The US has begun funding alternative logistics corridors in Africa to counter Chinese dominance, with Japan and India as key allies.

This is not a plan B. It's a frontal offensive.

The digital wall

Trump understands that today the real battlefield is not on the seas, but in the data.

Huawei, ZTE, and TikTok remain strategic targets.

New restrictions prohibit allied countries from installing submarine cables using Chinese technology.

The United States is building a new Atlantic digital network that completely excludes China from the data ecosystem.

The message is clear: if you choose Chinese 5G, you lose access to the US.

High-voltage diplomacy

In 2025, Trump launched an unprecedented diplomatic pressure campaign.

Official visits, debt forgiveness, and preferential trade agreements.

But with an unwritten clause: “either China or us.”

There is no longer room for ambiguity.Neutrality in this trade war is a form of surrender.

China's response: resilience with aggression. Xi Jinping has not sat idly by.

It has strengthened alliances with countries that Washington neglected for years.

It increased its military presence in the South China Sea.

He launched a financial counteroffensive with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

To maintain the BRI's appeal, it strengthened agreements with Russia, Iran, and several African countries with more flexible terms.

China no longer offers just concrete. It now offers software, satellites, artificial intelligence, and green financing. It's changing its strategy, adapting, and won't stop.

The closing of this story has not yet been written.

Trump has decided to be the wall that stops China's advance, not with concrete measures but with conditions, not with passive diplomacy but with strategic realism.

The question is not whether the Silk Road can be stopped.

The question is whether the world will stop watching Beijing construct a new global order.

Because today, more than ever, the future isn't debated in forums... It's built with contracts.

And they fight port by port.

Trump understood it late, but he understood it:

The Silk Road is not a project; it is a geopolitical trap.

And their plan isn't just to contain it: it's to dismantle it, country by country, contract by contract, with the only tool Beijing respects: power.

But there is something that not even Trump can stop:

The map of the world is no longer in treaties. It's in logistics corridors. In supply chains. It is in cables that no one sees, but everyone uses.

And if an alternative isn't built, there won't be a trade war. Just a slow, silent surrender.

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Trade Wars or Growth Engines: The Real Stakes of Protectionism

By Mariano Bernardez

Levy’s arguments are very interesting and well-informed, albeit from a protectionist perspective. He sees trade as a zero-sum game.

The globalization promoted by the US over the last 40 years has actually done the opposite, making the US and the world much richer and more just.

Before the Silk Road, US and EU built Globalization 1.0, opening new markets and creating WTO rules.

Building walls (an old Chinese idea) doesn't help growth. China understood this with its Silk Road strategy (an idea originating in the West).

Of course, it benefits from helping its allies grow. The opposite is true of Trump's protectionism. As in the game, paper surrounds stone.

Walls don't serve to contain, but to enclose—from the Berlin Wall and the Maginot Line to the Great Wall.

Both China and US are currenty entangled in a zero-sum, mutually destructuve (M.A.D.) protectionist war.

Peace and free trade are mutually indispensable and beneficial.

Ronald Reagan explained it very well 40 years ago when he defeated Soviet protectionism by challenging it to liberalize trade. In a famous speech, he said, "We are not free because we are powerful; we are powerful because we are free."

China built its global power by embracing globalization but found itself limited by its protectionist tactics, equivalent to building a “Great Wall” (intellectual property, closing the Internet, blocking foreign investment) around its internal market. These tactics limited

China's growth and made it fatally dependent on exports.

The Silk and Road strategy was China’s first attempt to break its isolation, but it still presented the limitations Levy describes.

Due to these protectionist policies, the Silk and Road largely failed, generating backlash from emerging economies.

Paradoxically, it also favored a protectionist turn in the US's new administration.

Now, both countries struggle to “make peace” and restore the vital two-way arteries of globalization.

Nobody wins a trade war. It’s a classic case of a lose-lose, zero-sum game.

At the end of his article, Levy recognizes the superiority of the globalization strategy, but treats it as if it were a war (zero-sum or lose-lose) instead of a non-zero-sum (two-way, win-win)

Protectionists discover the law of gravity after jumping out of windows.