<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, congratulated Marco Rubio on Tuesday after the United States Senate unanimously confirmed his appointment as US Secretary of State in the new Administration of Donald Trump.</strong></h4> “Congratulations Marco Rubio on your confirmation as Secretary of State of the United States,” Albares declared through social networks. “Let us continue working on our strategic bilateral relationship and build on transatlantic unity to address common challenges,” he added. Born in Miami, the son of Cuban immigrants and a senator for Florida, Marco Rubio becomes the first Hispanic to head the US Secretary of State. In 2016 he even stood for the Republican primaries for the presidential elections, in which Donald Trump himself finally stood. In his interventions in the Senate, Rubio has always shown himself to be a “hawk,” a supporter of toughening policy with China and Iran and of imposing sanctions on Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. Likewise, although in 2022 he strongly condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in recent times he has opposed the sending of new weapons to this country and has openly supported a peace process that would end the war in exchange for concessions from both parties, including Kyiv’s renunciation of the territories annexed by Russia. “President Trump was elected to keep promises, and he’s going to keep those promises. And his primary promise when it comes to foreign policy is that the priority of the United States Department of State will be the United States,” Marco Rubio declared after being sworn in through social network X. <h5><strong>Spain, a “BRICS nation”</strong></h5> The appointment of Rubio and the congratulations of Albares came hours after Donald Trump threatened to impose a “one hundred percent” trade tariff on Spain, arguing that “it is a BRICS nation.” The president made these observations in the Oval Office during his first day of work and while signing his first executive orders surrounded by journalists, with whom he held an informal first round of questions and answers. At one point, a journalist asked him about the military spending of some NATO member states. In his response, Trump recalled that the United States is contributing 200 billion dollars more than NATO for the war in Ukraine and regretted that other countries have not reached five percent in defense spending. “It is ridiculous, because it affects them much more, we are an ocean in between,” he said. The American president even gave Spain as an example of this. “Spain is far below (five percent), and yet it is a BRICS nation,” Trump suddenly said. “Do you know what a BRICS nation is? You will find out. If the BRICS countries want to go ahead (with their idea of creating an alternative global currency to the dollar), fine, but we will impose at least a 100% tariff on business they do with the United States,” the president continued, addressing a journalist, who immediately corrected him to remind him that Spain does not belong to that multinational group. BRICS is made up of several emerging economies. Its name comes from its founding partners, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Other countries are also part of the group, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Iran and Indonesia. Spain in English is called “Spain.” That circumstance, according to some journalists, would have led Trump to attribute to Spain the letter “s” of the word BRICS, which really corresponds to South Africa. Donald Trump took office on Monday as the 47th president of the United States. After the ceremony, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, congratulated him on his return to the White House and expressed his desire to “work with the new United States Administration to strengthen the strategic relationship between our countries and address common global challenges.” For his part, José Manuel Albares declared that the objective of the Spanish Government is to have “the best possible relationship with the United States” while continuing to defend its “interests and values.”
