While media and sometimes academic discourses regularly pit pro-globalization neo-liberal governments against populist governments advocating a nationalist and protectionist retreat, the article shows that contemporary populist governments such as Trump, Bolsonaro, Johnson or Orban’s are in fact the product of various currents of neo-liberalism that emerged in the early 1990s and that have relied on a nationalist matrix to push for more economic liberalization against transnational organizations deemed too protective and regulatory. Rather than falling into a false opposition between globalism and nationalism, it would therefore be preferable to recognize that the global economic-political game is increasingly structured around a national-neoliberalism.