The Perverse Use of Liberalism

In his work The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith laid the philosophical foundations of modern economic liberalism, advocating free markets, private property, and limited government intervention in the economy. Although his ideas were formulated in the eighteenth century, liberalism quickly ceased to be merely an economic theory and became an instrument of power serving the interests of the great empires.

The first major beneficiary of this doctrine was the British Empire during the Industrial Revolution. As production expanded and wealth became concentrated in the hands of factory owners, millions of workers endured appalling living conditions. Brutally long working hours, subsistence wages, child labour, and the absence of labour rights defined the era. The rhetoric of the free market was used to legitimise a system that placed profit above human dignity. Workers were reduced to mere instruments of production, treated as economic slaves rather than as people created in the image of God, endowed with the gift of free will and the freedom to live with dignity.

After the Second World War, the United States inherited this role and became the world’s leading promoter of economic liberalism. Through institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), it helped establish an international order presented as universal, but largely built around its own strategic interests. The dominance of the US dollar, reinforced by the petrodollar system, became one of the pillars of this order, enabling the United States to exercise an unprecedented degree of economic and financial influence in modern history.

The dominance of the dollar gives the United States a structural advantage over every other economy. Indebted countries often find themselves subject to economic adjustment programmes requiring privatisation, market liberalisation, and reduced government intervention. The outcome is predictable: strategic companies are sold into private or foreign hands at bargain prices, the country loses control over key national assets, public services weaken, and national decision-making capacity diminishes. In the name of economic efficiency, state sovereignty is sacrificed.

The United States is now one of the wealthiest nations on Earth. Its prosperity is the result of innovation, productivity, and the scale of its economy, but also of the privileged position it occupies within the international financial system. Its ability to issue the world’s primary reserve currency and to shape, to a large extent, the rules governing international trade gives it advantages that no other country possesses. Economic liberalism, presented as a universal model, has often served to reinforce this dominant position.

For Portugal, this reality represents an existential challenge. A country that hands over its strategic sectors to foreign interests gradually loses the ability to determine its own future. Energy, telecommunications, banking, infrastructure, natural resources, and public utility companies are all instruments of national sovereignty. Once they are no longer under national control, full economic independence ceases to exist.

Portugal provides concrete examples of this process. During the Troika financial assistance programme (2011–2014), the country accepted a sweeping programme of privatisations as a condition for receiving international financial support, following a financial crisis that originated on Wall Street. Several strategic companies came under foreign control: EDP was acquired primarily by China Three Gorges; REN’s largest shareholders became China’s State Grid and the Oman Investment Authority; ANA Airports was concessioned to the French group Vinci; and TAP, although it has partially returned to state ownership, remains involved in a process of partial privatisation. In the banking sector, institutions such as BPI came under the control of the Spanish group CaixaBank, while Novo Banco became majority-owned by the American investment fund Lone Star. These transactions were frequently justified as necessary to reduce public debt and meet commitments made to international creditors, but they also reduced the role of the Portuguese state and domestic capital in sectors considered strategic.

Portugal’s high public debt continues to restrict the room for manoeuvre of successive governments. A significant portion of the state budget is devoted to servicing interest payments and refinancing that debt, limiting the country’s ability to invest in areas such as healthcare, education, defence, and infrastructure. The greater the dependence on external financing, the greater the influence of financial markets and international institutions over national economic policy.

Since its founding in 1143, Portugal has faced numerous threats to its sovereignty. The most serious occurred during the Iberian Union (1580–1640). Although the country formally retained its own laws and institutions, it lost the ability to conduct an independent foreign policy and saw its interests subordinated to those of Madrid. Today, Portugal does not face military occupation, but rather a different form of dependence: economic dependence. The threat no longer comes from foreign armies, but from the gradual transfer of control over the fundamental instruments of the national economy to bureaucrats in the European Union and the United States.

True sovereignty cannot be measured merely by the existence of borders or a national flag. A state is genuinely free only when it controls its strategic resources, protects its productive capacity, and retains the power to make fundamental decisions without depending on external interests. Without economic independence, political independence inevitably becomes incomplete.