There is something deeply romantic about economic sovereignism. It is the idea that a border drawn on a map can act as a force field to protect us from global bad weather, inflation and, above all, mathematics. It is a pity that, when tested, this recipe resembles less a national strategy and more an attempt to put out a fire using petrol, convinced that the colour of the flames is, after all, very patriotic.

The Budapest syndrome: the disaster algorithm

Let’s start with our favourite ‘model’:Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. While the rule of law was being discussed in Brussels, the ‘perfect economic crime’ was being staged in Budapest. The recipe is disarmingly simple, almost ingenious in its perversity.

It all starts with rising prices (bills, cereals, reality). The sovereignist answer? Sprinkling subsidies. Why solve the structural problem when you can give away money you don’t have? But money, you know, has a nasty habit of weighing on budgets. The debt goes up, the markets get nervous and the Hungarian forint starts a downhill slide that would make a skier envious.

Here comes the masterpiece: currency devaluation imports inflation (because yes, commodities are paid for in dollars or euros, not in ‘national pride’). To stop inflation, the government decides to lower prices by decree. Result? Businesses suffer, production grinds to a halt, growth disappears and you find yourself in the magical world of stagflation. A mix of skyrocketing prices and sub-zero growth that is, for all intents and purposes, the economic equivalent of trying to light a fire by doing a rain dance.

Trump 2.0: America and the ‘beautiful’ debt

If Hungary is the laboratory, Trump’s America in 2025 was the large-scale production. Here, sovereignism is dressed up as ‘Deal’. The idea is simple: we put up tariffs so others pay and we get rich.

Analytically speaking, it was a triumph of post-truth. The tariffs were mainly paid by American importers, not the Chinese or Europeans. To compensate for the bloodletting, there was a shift to ‘monstrous’ fiscal expansion: tax cuts financed with debt that made even Wall Street veterans shake in their boots. The dollar, once a safe haven, began to show cracks under the weight of an out-of-control deficit. When the superpower plays petty chemist with customs barriers, it does not ‘bring jobs back home’; it simply exports instability, raising the cost of living for those same Americans who had believed the fairy tale. Poor them…

The Italian ‘genius’: spending money that does not exist

But let us come to us. Because in Italy we have a particularly creative local variant of sovereignism: that of the ‘cheerful overrun’. There is a narrative among certain parliamentary benches that the deficit is an abstract number, a spite that we do to some grey Brussels bureaucrat.

“We have to make debt to grow!” they shout. Oblivious to the fact that Italy is not a blank sheet of paper, but a tome of 2,800 and whistling billion euros in debt.

The spread ATM

Every time a domestic sovereignist hints at the idea of ignoring European constraints, a magical thing happens: the market, that evil ‘monster’ made up of savers, pension funds and banks (including Italian ones, mind you), demands a risk premium. We call it the Spread.

Here is the analytical part that the sovereignists forget to include in their social posts: Italy already spends around 80-90 billion euro a year on debt interest alone. That is a monstrous figure. It is as if every year we burn three or four entire financial manoeuvres just to say ‘thank you’ to those who lent us the money.

When we worsen the accounts to finance election tips, the interest rate on our BTPs goes up. A 1% increase (one hundred measly basis points) translates into billions of euros of extra interest over time. Money taken directly from:

• Public health (the one where there is a shortage of doctors).
• Education (the one where the ceilings fall).
• Infrastructure (those that collapse).

Our home-grown sovereignism is not ‘defence of the Italians’. It is a transfer of wealth from public services to the pockets of big international creditors. It is the ultimate paradox: they cry ‘sovereignty’ while handing over the leash of our economy to global markets, making us more fragile, more blackmailable and poorer.

Conclusion: the shipwreck of loneliness

The lesson from Budapest, Washington and the chronicles of our markets is only one: the economy does not respond to the commands of propaganda. You cannot decree prosperity any more than you can order the tides to stop.

Ultimately, sovereignism is not a political strategy, but an error of perspective. It sells the idea that to isolate oneself is to protect oneself, that to raise the tone against Brussels is to be respected, and that debt is someone else’s problem. The reality is that in an interconnected world, those who shut themselves in do not become stronger; they just become an easier target for speculation and instability.

Sovereignism sells the illusion that it can stop the waves of the market with a decree. But as the Hungarian case shows, the only result is that the water rises faster, until it submerges the very people it was intended to protect.

For Italy, and for Europe as a whole, the real challenge is not to regain a sovereignty in the form of devalued currencies and barbed-wire borders. True sovereignty is the ability to inhabit the future with accounts in order, a solid currency and a voice that counts in the global chorus. Anything else is just a very expensive, and terribly effective, way of drowning with flag in hand.