Deputy FM Magyar in Florida to negotiate with future Trump administration

Levente Magyar, a state secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has started business talks in Florida on strengthening economic ties between Hungary and the United States, building on the good ties with the incoming US administration.

Magyar said in a statement on Friday that the excellent ties between Hungary and the Trump administration could pave the way for new opportunities in the area of economic cooperation. On the basis of the talks, products and services could appear in Hungary that would benefit the whole economy, he added.

Among the people with whom Magyar met was the investor Tamás Péterffy.

Deputy FM Magyar. Photo: MTI

Official: Age of sovereignty has arrived

2025 will usher in “a new age of sovereignty”, Balázs Orbán, the Prime Minister’s political director said, addressing the Budapest Global Dialogue conference on Friday. He said 2024 marked the end of an old era of an obsolete neoliberalism which had neither worked in the EU nor the US. Participating in a roundtable at the the conference organised by the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and the Observer Research Foundation, Orbán said the Western world was undergoing a shake-up and hopefully the biggest success of 2025 would be the end of the Russia-Ukraine war, “which has caused serious damage to the entire world”.

He said there was already “political momentum” to end the war thanks to new forces in the EU, the US, India and China. “We’re optimistic,” he said. “I think we can convince the warring parties to find a path to peace.” Commenting on the US elections, Orbán said the outcome was down to issues such as migration and law enforcement policy as well as the situation of the judiciary and “the stagnation of the economy”. He added that changes in America would positively affect the rest of the world, adding that a strong US, China and Europe, would have a stabilising effect.

Max Abrahms, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, said US foreign policy would discard liberal internationalism and become more transactional, adding that the US foreign policy would not be uniform but “differ from country to country and region to region”.

Austrian geopolitical strategist Velina Tchakarova said US-EU relations were likely to see a positive turn. “We have reached a crossroads”, she said, adding that the bloc would have to change its methods because Europe was now among the losers. The big question, she said, was how Europeans could solve security issues while meeting challenges related to industry and climate change.

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