The United States remains the elusive promised land of world soccer. The largest market for television rights and ticket sales is resisting the allure of the sport that inspires the most passion worldwide. FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who maintains a close relationship with Donald Trump, wants the Club World Cup and, above all, the 2026 World Cup for international teams, which the United States is hosting alongside Mexico and Canada, to serve as a catapult to boost the game’s popularity. But Trump’s policies, including hostility toward his neighbors, his immigration and trade decisions, and entry bans on citizens from multiple countries, in addition to the recent protests against the president’s policies that erupted in Los Angeles — including a curfew — threaten to overshadow both events.

Infantino attended Trump’s victory rally in Washington on January 19, where the Republican mentioned him five times, always by name. “Thank you, Gianni, for the World Cup.” “This is FIFA at its most respectful,” the FIFA president said in a video on Instagram. “To be mentioned by the new president of the United States of America at his victory rally, in his victory speech, is something unique. It’s beautiful,” he added.

The FIFA president was one of the select guests at Trump’s inauguration at the Capitol the following day. He also accompanied the U.S. president to Saudi Arabia and Qatar during his Middle East tour, even at the cost of arriving late to the FIFA assembly in Asunción, Paraguay, to the astonishment and anger of those in attendance.

“The last minute changes to the timings of the FIFA Congress are deeply regrettable […] to have the timetable changed at the last minute for what appears to be simply to accommodate private political interests, does the game no service and appears to put its interests second,” UEFA complained in a statement after a hint of a standoff.

“I felt I had to be there to represent all of you, to represent football,” Infantino apologized. “As FIFA president, my responsibility is to make decisions in the best interests of the organization,” he argued.

“I think it is absolutely crucial for the success of a World Cup to have a close relationship with the president,” the FIFA chief said in February. Trump, meanwhile, considers Infantino a “great friend.” They have played golf together, see each other relatively frequently, and shower each other with praise. “President Trump is definitely a sportsman. I am lucky enough in my life to come across some of the most talented athletes in soccer. And President Trump is made of the same sort of fiber. He is a competitor. He wants to compete, he wants to win. He wants to show who is the best,” Infantino said of him in 2020 when introducing him at a dinner with executives in Davos.

Trump is, in principle, the person who will present both the Club World Cup and the World Cup. The golden trophy destined for the champions of the world has been in the White House for weeks.

Soccer, however, remains a second-class sport in the United States, where football (both the NFL and college football) is the undisputed king of sports. According to a Gallup poll published in 2024, gridiron football is, at 41%, the favorite sport of most Americans, followed by baseball (10%) and basketball (9%), although at least soccer (5%) has overtaken ice hockey (4%). The sports are not mutually exclusive, but when citizens are asked if they are fans, soccer’s relative position does not improve.

Not even the Messi phenomenon has caught on with broad segments of the population, despite the fact that the Argentine star’s arrival at Inter Miami caused a surge in team jersey sales and ratings for MLS in general. Soccer, however, is gaining ground and has a somewhat stronger position among the younger segment of the population and the Latino community. Therefore, the double World Cup presents itself as a unique opportunity.

The Club World Cup kicks off this Saturday with Messi’s Inter Miami in the opening match. Thirty-two teams are participating, but peculiar qualification rules have allowed four Brazilian and three MLS sides into the draw, while Spain, England, Germany, and Italy have only two representatives each. Something is amiss when Al-Ahly, Al-Hilal, and Al-Ain are participating, but not Liverpool, Barça, or Napoli, the latter three champions of their domestic leagues this season.

It will, in a sense, be a dress rehearsal for the 2026 World Cup, the largest in history, with 48 participating countries, compared to 32 in 2022. The United States will have 11 host cities, where 78 of the 104 World Cup matches will be played. Canada will host 13 matches in Toronto and Vancouver, and Mexico will host another 13, spread across Mexico City, Monterrey, and Guadalajara.

“The United States is on the verge of becoming the soccer power in the world. You don’t know it yet, but it’s coming faster than you think,” Infantino said in Davos in January 2020. “President Trump has been in this venture from the very beginning. He wanted it to be organized, together with Canada and Mexico, in prelude of the great trade agreement that you just signed last week. So, soccer is in advance of trade as well,” Infantino said at the time. This is the trade agreement Trump has torn up at the start of his second term.

Overall, Washington’s relations with its neighbors are far from the unifying ideal with which the candidacy was presented. Trump has flirted with the idea of annexing Canada, provoking a nationalist backlash in the country. Tariffs and immigration policy have deteriorated relations, and no one knows how they will evolve until the start of an event that requires logistical coordination and agility at the borders. Canadian tourist arrivals have plummeted, and visits to the United States in general are declining due to Trump’s hostile immigration and border policies.

Last month, the Trump administration’s 2026 World Cup Task Force insisted that all fans would be welcome and claimed supporters would be able to enjoy a “seamless experience,” in Trump’s words. “I know we’ll have visitors from close to 100 countries,” Vice President J.D. Vance said. “We want them to come, we want them to celebrate, we want them to watch the game. But when the time is up, they’ll have to go home.”

Last week, Trump issued an executive order banning entry into the United States for citizens of 12 countries and placing severe restrictions on those of seven others. Among the banned countries is Iran, a 2026 World Cup qualifier. The executive order includes an exception for soccer players participating in the World Cup, coaches, their families, and necessary support staff, but not for fans. Furthermore, in other countries not subject to visa restrictions, the wait times and requirements for visas are such that they discourage attendance.

The Club World Cup has so far generated little excitement in the United States. The high price of tickets — those for the opening match were initially priced at between $300 and $500; now they’re selling for just over $50 — the deteriorating economic situation (also due to Trump’s erratic policies), the novelty of the tournament, the lack of prominent teams (and the presence of many marginalized ones), and the low popularity of soccer in general in the country all play against it. The setting of prime European viewing times for many of the matches is an implicit acknowledgment that soccer’s conquest of the United States will have to wait.

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In Spain’s most technologically-advanced village, there are no flying cars or humanoid robots. The mayor plays a Baroque lute. High-speed internet has yet to arrive. Its streets and stone walls – deserted on a recent May afternoon – are decorated with bronze plaques whose inscribed verses are recited by the authors themselves.

A decade ago, here in Juzbado – in the province of Salamanca – the poet Antonio Gamoneda read from one of his works: “There’s black grass on the slopes and purple lilies among the shadows… but what am I doing standing before the abyss?”

A rooster’s cock-a-doodle-doo and a stork’s croaking are the only sounds that can be heard on the streets. However, the Technological Employment Map of Spain, prepared by the Cotec Foundation, indicates that this peaceful community of 189 inhabitants is the Spanish municipality with the highest percentage of workers in the technology sector: more than 91%. So where are they?

The musicologist Fernando Rubio has been winning local elections for almost two decades. He recalls that when he first took office as mayor, he began receiving confusing calls at City Hall.

“Hello, I’m calling from Juzbado.”

“No you’re not, you’re calling from the factory,” he would reply. “I’m in Juzbado.”

Rubio is referring to Spain’s only uranium plant, a double-fenced bunker opened in 1985 by the National Uranium Company (ENUSA). It’s located just under two miles from the village center. The facility, which employs 381 workers, has twice the population of the municipality. So, little by little, it also took on the name “Juzbado.”

The hustle and bustle of the factory, which even has night shifts, contrasts with the peaceful tranquility of the village. The factory supplies uranium to around 20 nuclear power plants across Spain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden and Finland. Around 17% of the electricity in Spanish homes, as well as the energy of tens of millions of Europeans, depends on the fuel pellets that are processed on the outskirts of this tiny location in Salamanca province.

The newspaper archives kept by EL PAÍS reflect the protests that the project sparked in its early days. “Many towns don’t want the factory,” proclaimed the then-mayor, back in 1980. The journalist described Juzbado as “a town without asphalt and without unemployment,” where residents lived “off their own land and their few heads of cattle.” There were fears of “genetic mutations in human beings.” Hundreds of people demonstrated in front of the barbed wire fence.

Today, after 40 years of operation, there are no reports of serious safety problems or radioactive emissions… but the annual drills are a reminder that this isn’t just any ordinary factory. Three years ago, workers rehearsed what to do in the event of a terrorist attack. The scenario was a supposed act of arson, to divert attention from the placement of a bomb.

ENUSA is a public company; 60% is owned by the State Industrial Holdings Company (SEPI), which is part of the Ministry of Finance. The remaining 40% is controlled by the Center for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research (CIEMAT), part of the Ministry of Science. Its annual turnover is around €300 million ($341 million). The 10 residents surveyed by EL PAÍS believe that this lucrative uranium monoculture, which has been growing for decades, should have contributed more to Juzbado’s development. “We don’t have high-speed internet; we’ll have it by the end of the year, because the State Secretariat for Telecommunications is implementing universal broadband. Right now, we have fairly mediocre internet, it’s patchy,” laments the mayor, a member of the ruling Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE).

Fernando Rubio – a specialist in Baroque and Renaissance music – teaches at the University of Salamanca, but lives with his family in Juzbado, on a cliff with impressive views of the Tormes River. Ironically, as the mayor of Spain’s most technologically-advanced municipality, as soon as he took office he embraced poetry. Every year, since 2008, the best Spanish-language poets have come to this community to recite their verses, which are then engraved on bronze plaques. “Since you’re not safe from anything, try to be the salvation of something,” proclaimed the Uruguayan poet Ida Vitale, winner of the Miguel de Cervantes Prize. “The pigeons coo in their nests. And, in the distance a bell can be heard – a small heartbeat that calls on us to live close to the mystery,” recited Francisca Aguirre, who won the 2018 National Prize for Spanish Literature.

The mayor strolls through the narrow streets filled with engraved verses, until he reaches the town’s only bar, El Toral, run by Lourdes García. An 84-year-old man, Benedicto Martín, comes in and orders a glass of wine. He explains that he worked half his life in “la nuclear,” as they used to call it. Another local resident, 71, orders a glass of beer. His name is Antonio Ruiz, “like the bullfighter [nicknamed] Espartaco.” He participated in the construction of the factory and then stayed on, processing uranium fuel pellets until his retirement.

No one at the bar can accept the fact that Juzbado is the Spanish municipality with the highest percentage of workers in the technology sector.

“They’re not people from Juzbado; we’re the same old people here,” Ruiz scoffs. There’s bitterness in his voice, because his son hasn’t found a job at the factory. Everyone in the village knows everyone else, yet the mayor and the locals can barely name 15 people who live in Juzbado and also work at the uranium factory.

Entering the factory isn’t easy. This newspaper requested a visit from ENUSA on April 7, following the publication of the report that ranked Juzbado as the most technologically-advanced municipality in Spain. After a few weeks, the publicly-owned company proposed May 13 as the date of a visit. During this waiting period, the mysterious massive blackout of April 28 placed uranium at the center of the political debate, with the right-wing Popular Party and far-right Vox demanding that the government extend the useful life of Spain’s seven nuclear reactors. The phased closure of these facilities is scheduled between 2027 and 2035.

Two weeks ago, in the Congress of Deputies, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, of the PSOE, proclaimed: “There’s a lot of talk about nuclear power plants, but little talk about the fact that there’s no uranium in Spain. Therefore, we’ll have to import it. Where will it come from?”

The PP immediately responded on social media: “We have more uranium than Pedro Sánchez is [aware] of,” referring to the reserves of more than 34,000 tons of low-quality uranium found in the Spanish subsoil – particularly in Salamanca – according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Hours later, Sánchez made a clarification: “The uranium deposits that exist in Spain stopped being exploited decades ago because they were absolutely unviable from an economic point of view, [while also being] highly-polluting.” ENUSA closed its last uranium mine in 2000, during the right-wing administration of Prime Minister José María Aznar, of the PP (1996-2004). The public company has spent more than $120 million on the environmental restoration of that mine, in Saelices el Chico, another municipality in the province of Salamanca.

The Juzbado-based plant is primarily dedicated to converting uranium oxide powder – which is purchased from other countries, primarily Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Namibia, Russia, Niger and Canada – into fuel pellets. Each pellet – less than half-an-inch in diameter – generates the same amount of energy as a ton of coal, enough to last a family for a year.

Pablo Vega, the facility’s director, sat down with EL PAÍS in a meeting room. According to his figures, 23 of his workers (6%) are linked to Juzbado, either by birth or residence. “As a public company, I can’t say: ‘I’ll [hire] people from this town.’ If a position opens up, anyone can apply under equal conditions,” he argues.

Cotec’s Technological Employment Map analyzes Social Security affiliation data in all of Spain’s municipalities. Juzbado has 411 employees, with 375 of them dedicated to technological activities. Most of the facility’s employees, however, live in the city of Salamanca, about 15 miles away. Buses make the trip every day. “Having a factory in the municipality clearly represents an opportunity for young people and [guarantees] a stable population. And, logically, local authorities benefit from the taxes,” says Vega, a 51-year-old industrial engineer originally from Zamora who now lives in Salamanca.

The mayor has outlined the impact of the factory on the town. ENUSA owns more than 1,500 acres – almost 40% of the land – as well as heritage properties across the municipality. The City Council owns only 1%. The council receives about $250,000 each year from ENUSA, primarily from property and business taxes, which represents a third of its total income. The salary of the president of ENUSA alone, however, exceeds €245,000 – or $278,000 – annually. The position has been held for three years by Mariano Moreno, the former director-general of the PSOE’s Federal Executive Commission.

The Juzbado plant, as Vega emphasizes, is classified as “a strategic facility” for the European Union. There are only three other similar facilities: in Lingen (Germany), Västerås (Sweden) and Romans-sur-Isère (France). The director’s mission is to continue producing uranium after the Spanish nuclear reactors shut down in 2035. The plant already exports 65% of its production. And ENUSA has signed an agreement with an American company, Westinghouse, to manufacture fuel for the Russian-designed VVER reactors in Europe. Juzbado will help Finland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria avoid dependence on the autocratic Vladimir Putin.

Mayor Rubio, a leader in his party’s fight against depopulation, has reflected extensively on the slow death of towns, many of which have been condemned to accept mega-farms that deliver the final blow with their foul odors. “[The autonomous community of] Castilla y León has the sad honor of having seven of the ten regions in all of Spain that are at extreme risk of depopulation. In [the province of] Salamanca, we have three: Campo Charro, Vitigudino and Ledesma. We have a practically desert-like population density,” he sighs.

“One of the big problems,” Rubio continues, “is that rural areas have lost their self-esteem. It’s in the fatalism of a predetermined destiny: ‘we’re going to empty out.’ We need to radically change that dynamic,” he argues. “There are [clichés] that the vast majority of politicians in this country use, such as that there must be jobs and infrastructure [to repopulate empty Spain]. But the better your job, the more likely you are to leave [your hometown]. And fixing the roads has essentially served to encourage people to flee. It’s essential to have jobs and roads, but that’s no longer enough. Nobody is going to go live somewhere because they have a job right next door [to their house] if they’re going to rot in the afternoon, with absolutely nothing to do. Cultural development is needed,” he proclaims. “We’re vibrant people.”

One of the poems engraved on the walls of Juzbado speaks about the precision of language. “Expectant words, fabulous in themselves, promises of possible meanings (…) a brief error turns them ornamental. Their indescribable precision erases us,” recited Ida Vitale. Juzbado may be the most technologically-advanced town in Spain thanks to the uranium plant that sits on its outskirts, but this Cervantes Prize winner searched for – and found – another adjective: “I am enraptured; I have discovered a divine town.”

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Donald Trump ha distorsionado el comercio de Estados Unidos con el resto del mundo con su guerra comercial. Las empresas y particulares adelantaron sus importaciones para tratar de esquivar los cambiantes aranceles del presidente. Con ello, el déficit comercial se disparó en el primer cuatrimestre, pero vivió en mayo la mayor reducción intermensual de la historia. El adelanto de las compras provocó que las importaciones de la Unión Europea se redujesen un 40% en abril con respecto a marzo, hasta los 68.607 millones de dólares. Aun así, fueron casi idénticas a las de un año antes.

En conjunto, con datos desestacionalizados y en términos censales, el déficit de Estados Unidos en el comercio de bienes fue en abril de 86.965 millones de dólares, un 46% menos que en marzo, sobre todo por la caída de las importaciones. La rebaja es del 11% cuando se compara con la cifra del mismo mes del año anterior. La fuerte reducción del déficit ya había sido adelantada por el Censo con cifras provisionales, pero ahora se conocen datos más precisos y el desglose por países.

En el acumulado del año, el déficit comercial sigue batiendo récords. Estados Unidos vendió al exterior bienes por 722.346 millones y compró mercancías por un récord de 1,27 millones de dólares. Con ello, el déficit comercial pulverizó los registros previos y ascendió en cuatro meses a 552.000 millones de dólares, un 49% más que en los cuatro primeros meses de 2024.

Trump anunció el 2 de abril los mal llamados aranceles recíprocos, que luego dejó en un 10% generalizado a la semana siguiente. En paralelo fue imponiendo aranceles a Canadá y México, al aluminio y el acero y a las importaciones de vehículos y sus componentes. Las amenazas y los aranceles impuestos alteraron el tráfico comercial. El adelantamiento de las importaciones explica tanto el déficit disparado del primer trimestre como la reducción de abril. En conjunto, el desequilibrio sigue siendo enorme, pero así como el mayor déficit comercial lastró el producto interior bruto en el primer trimestre, la reducción del mismo puede impulsarlo en el segundo.

Por países y regiones, con datos no desestacionalizados, Estados Unidos redujo drásticamente su déficit comercial con Europa en abril con respecto a marzo (un 78%, hasta 13.432 millones de dólares) y prácticamente a la mitad con respecto a abril del año pasado. El saldo con Suiza pasó de un déficit de 14.401 millones en marzo a un superávit de 2.140 millones en abril. Aun así, la mayor reducción del déficit se produjo en Irlanda, de 29.325 millones en marzo a 9.453 millones en abril, por el adelanto en las importaciones de productos farmacéuticos, principalmente. Con España, se pasó de un déficit estadounidense de 81 millones de dólares en marzo a un superávit de 581 millones en abril, según las cifras estadounidenses, que no suelen coincidir con las españolas.

Frente a la Unión Europea, el déficit comercial de un mes a otro se redujo un 60%, hasta 19.157 millones. Si esa cifra se compara con abril de 2024, el recorte es del 20%. Aun así, en el acumulado de cuatro meses, el desequilibrio comercial crece un 59%, hasta los 115.422 millones de dólares, un récord para ese periodo.

El déficit con China ya se había reducido drásticamente en marzo, pero marcó un nuevo mínimo desde la pandemia en abril, con 17.185 millones de dólares.

Estados Unidos también redujo su déficit comercial con respecto a México y Canadá en abril, pero, de nuevo, a costa de haberlo aumentado significativamente los meses previos. En el caso mexicano, el déficit incluso aumenta en abril de este año con respecto al mismo mes del año pasado, al pasar de 13.647 a 14.023 millones de dólares. En el acumulado de cuatro meses crece un 16%, hasta 61.277 millones de dólares. En el canadiense aumenta un 29%, hasta los 23.398 millones, por la caída de las exportaciones a Canadá. El boicot a los productos estadounidenses se deja notar.