Jesse Burgess, host, filmmaker and co-founder of the award-winning food and travel channel Topjaw, says his role in the documentary series Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars is a dream job. In reality, it’s an even more polished extension of his earlier social media work: he travels the world to introduce viewers to the intense realm of haute cuisine. He visits (and samples) the planet’s most acclaimed restaurants as they face the Michelin Guide’s annual season.

“It’s a dream, but eating like that can be especially stressful, with three cameras around you, especially when you’re in a restaurant with other diners. You try not to be a nuisance despite having a lot of lights pointed at you and, at the same time, not to let the food fall out of your mouth,” he says in a video interview. “Not to mention what it means for the technical crew to film in kitchens that, contrary to appearances, almost never have any spare room. They have to respect the work of the chefs who are in the middle of a very important service for them,” he adds.

The truth is the series, which has just returned to Apple TV with an eight-episode second season that premiered last week, is a visual marvel that doesn’t feel like the result of a gourmet vacation. It not only offers unprecedented access to 16 of these exclusive establishments, but it also tells personal stories that surpass the plots of many fiction series.

Among the most striking real-life stories this season is that of Adam Dahlberg and Albin Wessman closing their Michelin-starred restaurant in Stockholm and reopening in a larger space. The recognition belongs to the restaurant and is not a permanent, personal award for the chef, so the pair in practice relinquished their star. They have 52 days to prove the new venue deserves to regain that honor, with the possibility of aiming for a second star. “It’s one of the things that struck me most this season. They had kept their star for a decade and they dared to try something new. But I was even more impressed by Niklas Ekstedt, also in Stockholm, who decided to create a restaurant centered on cooking without electricity, relying on fire and traditional Scandinavian techniques while aiming for a second star. What’s powerful is that we see him learning on the fly, with the restaurant already open,” Burgess says.

Another story this season follows a chef and his family as they risk everything to put a small island on the Michelin Guide map. And in central Rio de Janeiro, a father and son — two generations of a legendary family of cooks — each seek recognition on their own terms, with their respective offerings located very close to one another.

A sandwich shop transforms each night into a fine-dining restaurant while a young couple attempts to put Filipino cuisine at the center of one of the most competitive culinary scenes in the United States. These are very different situations that nevertheless face the same questions: what will Michelin decide, and will all that effort have been worth it?

Although one of these high-level kitchens is often described as an army headquarters because of the focus and discipline required, Burgess would define it as “a choreographed dance; it’s like being on a stage every day.” “A soldier receives a lot of training and may practice for years without ever applying those skills in real life. In the kitchen, by contrast, they use all those elements daily and, in fact, there is very little time for training,” the host explains.

Part of the documentary’s educational value comes from statements by the usually inaccessible Michelin Guide inspectors, who explain in their own words what they look for in a restaurant, while maintaining the discretion typical of their institution. The series also tries to explain to viewers why, even when prices at these establishments are very high, profit margins often remain slim. When Burgess is asked about DiverXo, which two years ago raised its menu price by 23% to reach €450, the food expert defended Madrid chef Dabiz Muñoz’s decision.

“There’s a very common misconception: thinking that if I go to a restaurant and it costs me a lot to eat there, then the chef or whoever’s in charge probably drives off in a Ferrari at sunset, making a fortune at the expense of all the customers,” he says. “They’re often places with few tables; if something goes wrong at a four-person table, they can lose the profit for the entire night. I know restaurants that are full all the time and have a 4% annual profit. If any unexpected event hits, like a pandemic, everything goes to ruin,” he argues.

Burgess’s passion for food was born thanks to his mother. “She was a flight attendant. Since I was five years old she began working on private flights. She would bring me food from wherever she traveled. By age 11 I had already tried Russian caviar and Mediterranean prawns, Danish pastries… I was obsessed with her job,” he recalls.

Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars has executive production by the chef Gordon Ramsay, known to audiences as the strict and sometimes ill-tempered creator of the international format Kitchen Nightmares. His fame is such that the internet is full of memes of his fiery reactions. “If you want to know whether Gordon ever put two slices of bread on my head while shouting that I’m an ‘idiot sandwich,’ as in one of his best-known parodies, the answer is no,” the series host jokes. “But the fact that moment is so popular shows he knows how to do television. Throughout his career he’s been very attuned to what’s culturally relevant, and that has been a great help in creating this project,” Burgess concludes.

Vladimir Putin is in trouble. The war in Ukraine is not going well for him; casualties are mounting at an alarming rate; discontent in Russian society is growing amid serious economic hardships; and the Kremlin’s inner circle is becoming increasingly perplexed by their leader’s ineffectiveness. His response, for now, is the same as always: escalation. Against Ukraine, with more missiles; against his own citizens, with more repression; and against the EU, with attacks, threats, and provocations of various kinds — sabotage, cyberattacks, incursions — that are becoming increasingly bold and dangerous.

This latest strategy is driven by various motivations. One is to weaken the consensus in Europe behind support for Ukraine by fostering a sense of risk — the feeling that it is better not to get involved in trouble. With U.S. aid withdrawn, it is the EU that is propping up Kyiv’s defense, and for Putin, it is essential to break that pillar. Another motive is to sow discord and chaos within European societies, making them contentious and ineffective. Yet another is to create division within the EU, so that it does not move forward on the path to integration, which is its greatest strength. Putin perceives that he can escalate because Europeans lack a clear course of action in response. Concern over this drift toward Russian escalation is palpable in the public statements of leaders and diplomats from some European countries — and even more so in some private conversations.

It would be extremely naïve to underestimate these risks. Putin is, above all, a KGB operative, and he has a natural propensity to deploy these tactics. But the truly existential mistake is failing to connect this threat with the others coming from the world’s superpowers: the United States and China. They, too — albeit with different nuances — seek to dismantle or weaken the EU, and they act, using various tactics, to destroy or undermine it.

In the case of the United States, the issue is explicit. Washington’s new national security strategy bluntly states its intention to “cultivate resistance” to the EU, which it essentially describes as an adversary. In this case, the strategy involves attempts to provide political and technological support to Europhobic European nationalist groups. Trump’s toxicity has complicated the operation. The rejection he provokes in Europe is so widespread that many ultranationalists prefer to keep their distance. But there is room for moves to show support, and the platform provided by X remains skewed to their advantage.

It is no accident that J. D. Vance, in his famous speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2025, argued that the greatest danger to Europe is not Putin’s missiles but the alleged censorship of free speech — that is, actions to curb manipulations by the extreme right and by those who tilt the playing field in their favor. Nor is it any coincidence that the Trump administration wants to intervene to support Musk in a lawsuit before European courts over a fine imposed on X; or that, while considering withdrawing troops from Europe — thereby punishing certain countries — it is announcing possible new deployments agreed upon with friendly leaders — the president, not the prime minister, of Poland. What Trump, his supporters, and the tech magnates want is to dismantle the EU, which represents a regulatory and sanctioning force for containment and which keeps alive — even with its enormous flaws — an ideal of democracy and multilateralism that they abhor, preferring instead the law of force that works in their favor.

In the case of China, the matter is far more implicit. Beijing holds periodic summits with the EU and expresses interest in cooperating with it. It does not want the EU to suffer an economic downturn, since the bloc is a key customer for its exports. It wants Europeans to drift away from the U.S., and a certain degree of intra-European coordination serves that aim.

But only the naïve or the malicious fail to see that Beijing does not want a united, strong EU, because such a bloc could effectively confront it in its strategy of industrial domination; it prefers to divide and weaken us, and it does so in many ways.

China has been skillful in dealing with us one by one; it has provided lifelines to those who oppose the common project — most notably through massive investments in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary; it has exploited blind spots in the trade relationship to pump up its industrial muscle and destroy our industrial fabric through its talent and effort, but also through massive subsidies, dumping, forced transfers, or outright theft of intellectual property. In high levels of European politics there are those who believe that, among many other motives, China’s support for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine is also intended to wear down the EU, compelling it to commit itself to emergency defense instead of peacefully focusing on improving its competitiveness.

To think the three actions respond to a single, coordinated framework would be conspiratorial excess. But to ignore their contemporaneity, the multiplier effect of their coincidence, and the ease with which Trump courts Xi while inviting Putin to the G-20, would be suicidal folly.

It is equally reckless not to consider what this means given the whirlwind electoral calendar approaching in Europe. Citizens will decide. What is clear is that those three leaders — Putin, Trump and Xi — will be delighted if far-right forces that obstruct EU integration win.

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Commercial integration between Mexico and the United States, under the protection of the USMCA trade agreement, will first have to navigate a complicated customs issue: China. On the eve of the fourth round of talks, scheduled in theory for October, the economic rules that the Mexican government will impose on Chinese goods, investment and technology are of particular interest to the White House.

The matter is not trivial, given the recent winds blowing through Washington–Beijing relations after the meeting between President Xi Jinping and Donald Trump this week. In a cordial tone, the leaders met to address topics ranging from trade to artificial intelligence.

The meeting of the world superpowers led the United States to postpone the fourth round of bilateral USMCA negotiations with Mexico. The session was to take place next week; Washington cited “logistical reasons” to delay the meeting because of Xi Jinping’s visit and an upcoming G20 ministerial meeting. Although Mexican authorities expect to reschedule for October, there is no specific date yet.

Luis Rosendo Gutiérrez, deputy undersecretary for Foreign Trade at the Economy Secretariat, said that despite the change of dates, bilateral technical work continues. “We continue to work, practically, on a daily basis with USTR, the United States Department of Commerce, defending our sovereignty and seeing what coordination options we have with the United States so our region can do better,” the federal official said.

As the United States and China move their chess pieces and redesign their relationship, the Mexican government must calibrate its position vis-à-vis the superpowers and the country’s main trading partners. Claudia Sheinbaum’s government walks a fine line between the possibility of becoming a strategic ally of the United States in its commercial conflict with the rest of the world and becoming a target of its attacks.

Since he took office, Trump has insisted that Mexico has served as a springboard for imports from the Asian giant into the U.S. market without paying tariffs. Although Claudia Sheinbaum’s government has rejected those claims, it has deployed various measures to curb the trade deficit with the Asian country, ranging from increased customs oversight to higher tariffs and an import-substitution program under the Mexico Plan.

Despite those efforts, shipments of Chinese goods to Mexico continue to rise: in the first seven months of the year, Chinese imports exceeded $79.6 billion, while Mexican exports to that same country in the same period totaled just over $8.6 billion, according to Banco de México data. Reducing the trade imbalance has become a priority for the Sheinbaum government; however, the strategy to reduce dependence on Asian inputs is not yet visible in the statistics.

In this flow of goods, although Mexico now pays higher tariffs to Washington because of Trump’s tariff war, the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico has strengthened. From January to July this year, Mexican exports to the United States topped $358.7 billion. According to the Department of Commerce, the Latin American country is Washington’s top partner, accounting for 17% of US international purchases, surpassing Canada, Taiwan and China, which fell to fourth place with shipments to the American market of about $156 billion in the first seven months of 2026.

The strength of Mexican exports, despite Trump’s tariffs on cars, aluminum, copper and goods outside the USMCA, continues to hold, driven by shipments of computer equipment and other electronic components. On the other side, the United States is Mexico’s top importer with purchases of $156 billion from January to July, equivalent to 33% of Mexico’s total purchases, while China, with shipments of $79.6 billion, holds a 17% share of the pie.

With a shared border and a highly lucrative exchange of goods for both countries, Mexico and the United States will have to sit down to define a new commercial integration, whether or not under the USMCA. At the moment, the future of the agreement is in question after Washington refused last July to renew the USMCA for another 16 years and thereby triggered the ongoing annual reviews.

For the Trump administration, negotiations focus on reducing the trade deficit with Mexico, raising U.S. content in North American manufacturing and blocking Asian investment, especially in key sectors such as technology and critical minerals. On the Mexican side, the administration seeks better tariff treatment from Washington. The proposal is to reduce current sectoral tariffs under Section 232 that weigh on Mexico, lowering the steel tariff from 50% to 25% and the automobile tariff from 25% to 15%.

Mexico and the U.S. maintain an inescapable relationship because of their closely linked production chains and economic interests. However, Trump now wants to change that structure. “Mexico should have had an industrial development plan that would have allowed it to negotiate with both sides and partner with U.S. industrialization without breaking the link with China. They did not understand it in time and now they are at the mercy of the results of negotiations between China and the United States,” said a Mexican industrialist who asked to remain anonymous.

Víctor Gómez Ayala, director of Economic Analysis at Casa de Bolsa Finamex, acknowledges that at the next USMCA negotiation there is a risk that the United States will raise last-minute issues with Mexico, specifically on security. “I think the Mexican delegation is focused on doing whatever is necessary to achieve the goal of reducing sectoral tariffs,” he concluded.

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