Today's episode is presented by Nova Vax.

Nova Vax is a global leader in vaccine development and research.

The company is working to make safe and effective vaccines available to help protect those who need them around the world.

NOVAVACS is also collaborating with leading organizations across the global vaccines landscape,

including research institutions, government agencies, foundations, and industry to help ensure access and increase uptake of vaccines worldwide.

Learn more at W. W. Novavax.com.

Welcome to Power Play, Politico's Transatlantic Podcast, where I talk to some of the most influential

figures on either side of the Atlantic in the eye of global storms.

My guest this week is in charge of Europe's leading digital publisher Axel Springer.

And Mathier-Stirf and has been at the helm for the last 21 years at a medium megalith whose titles include

Devote and built in Germany, Insider in the US, and of course Politico, fully acquired two years

ago.

As one of the world's major media CEOs, he describes himself like this.

I still consider myself a journalist.

At the moment I'm working as a CEO but that doesn't change my profession.

And that explains why he tends to wade into big even contentious debates.

I've known Matier since we were both in Berlin in the brave new world after the fall of the

wall, a time of changed international relations and many hopes that seem to have soured or

been tested by new conflicts.

Now he's written a new book called The Trade Trap

about the Economic relationship between Western Democracy and the rise of

powerful autocracies, a challenge to much of the free trade liberal consensus that dominated after the Cold War.

...