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In the current debates over the future of the international liberal order, there is a missing element: multinational enterprises (MNEs). This paper looks at how any such discussion is incomplete without assessing the role played by MNEs in the global economy and argues that MNEs have emerged as the key actors in the global political economy. It does so by revisiting Susan Strange's concept of structural power and how it explains the power and influence of MNEs visa-vis states. In doing so, the paper advances a framework of the international system as hierarchical--as opposed to anarchical--where states and firms compete for power. The paper conducts a brief literature review on hierarchies and structural power and then uses the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and its influence on global semiconductor value chains as a case study on the changing power dynamics between MNEs and states., INTRODUCTION There is growing interest in the resilience and vulnerabilities of the liberal international order. (1) However, most system-level analyses by macro-economic and international relations scholars tend to overlook a [...]