European Framework for Strategic Dependencies: insights from Portugal between 2019 and 2024

The COVID-19 pandemic has had profound and enduring effects on economic activity worldwide, with heterogeneous impacts across countries and sectors. While countries strive to rebound, amid a myriad of significant and persisting challenges, there is a growing awareness that returning to pre-pandemic conditions is challenging. In fact, geopolitical tensions are hardening, pushing the world into uncharted territory and adding layers of complexity to the ongoing recovery efforts. For policymakers and businesses, it is crucial to remain adaptable and resilient, amid shifting global power dynamics, but also vigilant, continuously re-evaluating their alliances. In this evolving landscape, monitoring trade dependencies has thus become a critical tool to assess potential sources of vulnerability and shape resilient strategies to promote increased strategic autonomy. Against this backdrop, this article updates the analysis performed by Nogueira et al. (2022) and provides a time-extended perspective on Portugal’s trade dependencies, capturing evolving trends that deepen our understanding on how the country has been navigating different waves of complex challenges over time, within a shifting geopolitical landscape.