Center for Fundamental Rights Senior Fellow and US Ambassador to Hungary hopeful Bryan Leib has sent an open letter to the CEOs of major American passenger airlines, urging them to start offering non-stop, direct flights between the most populous American cities and Budapest.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has instructed his cabinet to prepare an agreement to reinstate the double taxation treaty between Hungary and the United States, unilaterally terminated by the Biden administration. The scrapping of the agreement by the previous US government caused significant economic and political harm to Hungary.
Donald Trump’s second presidency may bring a trade war between the EU and the United States. According to German weekly Die Zeit, Viktor Orbán could play a pivotal role in the trade negotiations should that happen.
Despite the end of the Democratic administration in the US and the departure of Joe Biden’s controversial ambassador to Hungary, the interference in Hungarian domestic affairs continues. On the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, the US Embassy in Budapest awarded millions of Hungarian forint in grants to opposition-aligned media outlets.
In his regular Friday morning interview on public radio, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán outlined plans for Hungary’s future, addressing challenges posed by globalist influences, economic priorities, and the changing geopolitical landscape, while stressing that a ‘golden age’ is coming regarding Hungarian–American ties under the Trump administration.
Former US Ambassador to Hungary David Cornstein has joined the critics of the Biden administration’s decision to impose sanctions on senior Hungarian government official Antal Rogán. Cornstein characterized the decision as ‘terrible and shameful’.
Antal Rogán, the Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister of Hungary, has been placed on the US Treasury Department’s sanctions list, in the last two weeks of the incumbent Biden administration. US–Hungary relations have severely soured under President Biden.
‘Hungary, a steadfast NATO ally that has balanced its Western alliances with a distinctly conservative trajectory, is well-positioned to serve as a key partner to the United States,’ Bryan Leib highlighted in his recent op-ed published on Townhall.
‘I am proud to say that Bulgaria is a multicultural, multi-ethnic and extremely tolerant society. Being the oldest state in Europe and having the oldest inhabited city in Europe, Plovdiv, only shows for how long this society has been preserved. At the same time, we are extremely cautious and sensitive concerning the subjects of tradition, values, religion, family, and homeland. We have kept our borders safe, just like our friends in Hungary.’
‘This is not a West–East conflict, but a West–West conflict. It is the traditional West versus the liberal, and even increasingly left-wing, self-eliminating West. The conflict is strong because we want the West that they want to abolish. They think it was hell worth to be eliminated, but we think it was a pretty good little world, and we want to remain an extended part of it.’
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.
