Conditional Interdependence: Neo-Imperial Mechanisms and Multinational Enterprises in Trump II Geostrategy

This article develops a neo-imperialism account of contemporary US geostrategy under the Trump 2 administration since 2025, showing how hierarchy is pursued less through territorial control and more through networked infrastructures, conditional market access, and standards-based governance. It examines how these mechanisms are designed, how they are implemented through firms and compliance architectures, and what this implies for multinational enterprise (MNE) strategy and international business scholarship.<br/><br/>This article develops a mechanism-based account of neo-imperialism in contemporary U.S. geostrategy under the Trump II administration. It argues that hierarchy is pursued through forms of conditional interdependence in which access to markets, infrastructures, technologies, and strategic networks is made contingent on alignment, trusted-partner status, and compliance. The article examines how these mechanisms are articulated through firms and compliance architectures and what this implies for multinational corporations’ strategy, positioning, and alignment choices, as well as for international business scholarship.<br/><br/>The analysis identifies a neo-imperial shift from managing geopolitical risk to governing cross-border economic activity through conditionality, infrastructural gatekeeping, and ecosystem control. The documents articulate conditional interdependence, in which participation in markets, technologies, infrastructures, and strategic networks is shaped by political and institutional conditions. Firms are positioned both as objects of discipline and redesign and as agents of implementation that reproduce hierarchy through standards, compliance, localisation, procurement, and ecosystem alignment. Strategic choice for U.S. and non-U.S. firms is structured around recurring trade-offs between alignment and hedging, integration and duplication, and state-embedded and market-led expansion.<br/><br/>The article develops an account of infrastructural neo-imperialism structured through conditional interdependence, in which firms, networks, and compliance architectures are used to govern access, exclusion, and alignment. It advances international business research by moving beyond exogenous geopolitical risk to explain how hierarchy is produced and reproduced through corporate organisation and network control.