It is yet another alliance of ideas that fiction could not have invented. The leftist vice president of Bolivia, who has never disavowed his Marxist past, is seeing eye-to-eye with a certain out-for-himself American real estate mogul with a taste for gold-plated everything.

Writing for America Economia, Álvaro García Linera has penned a kind of manifesto announcing the demise of the "ideology of globalization." The longtime ally of Bolivian President Evo Morales lays out a sharply worded obituary for the idea that expanding free trade and liberalism was "the putative final destination of human aspirations." He calls this conventional wisdom of the world's political and economic establishment: "the biggest ideological trickery of recent centuries."

Both the Brexit and Donald Trump victories, García Linera concludes, were just the outward proof that globalization's glory days were over. "Trump is not the free market's executioner, but a coroner appointed to quietly confirm its demise." Agree with him or otherwise, the essay is well worth a read, and we have it here in English.

Agree with him or otherwise, Trump certainly cannot be ignored either. His latest — five days before his inauguration — is a joint interview late yesterday from Trump Tower with The Times of London and Germany's Bild tabloid. This round of international chest-beating also includes something that too may be identified as an idea, if not the ideology, that could define Trump's presidency, both at home and abroad. And it walks hand-in-hand with García Linera's manifesto. Responding to the Brexit vote, Trump concludes, "Countries want their own identity." Of course, how those identities are defined — and how to avoid conflict between inward-looking nations — is another question.

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