02 December 2022 10:36
If the Americans had not yet understood Emmanuel Macron’s “en même temps” approach (at the same time), which has become his “ideological signature”, they certainly did so on the occasion of his official visit to the United States.
On the first day of his stay, November 30, Macron uttered very harsh words regarding the US policy of support for American companies, judged “super aggressive” and even likely to “break the West”. Some worried American friends immediately called me to ask me if Macron had any intention of going to confrontation with those words.
But here came the change of tone the following day: Macron spoke profusely of the centuries-old friendship between France and the United States, forged in blood, with a promise of “sincerity” and “frankness” and a “strategic clarity” on the argument of contention, namely the Law on the reduction of inflation which until the day before had been considered an act of “protectionism”.
No illusions
What happened in the meantime? Was Macron’s communication strategy in two stages? Or has Joe Biden really provided the expected answers? In reality, the explanation lies elsewhere.
The answer, in fact, is in Europe. The French delegation certainly had no illusions about its ability to influence a US law already voted and which figures among the successes of the Biden administration: almost 400 billion dollars in aid for the reindustrialization of the United States and for the ecological transition.
By dramatizing the situation in Washington, Macron wants to provoke the awakening of Europe
Macron’s statements were certainly aimed more at Europeans than at Joe Biden, sorry to displease the allies, but not enough to change his own policy. In the coming weeks there will be Euro-American consultations to “synchronize” (key word) economic decisions on both sides of the Atlantic, but this is not the relevant point.
“We have to do the job as Europeans, to advance as Europeans,” Macron said during the press conference organized on December 1 in Washington. The French president even joked that we cannot hope to solve “our European problems” with an American law. And this is where the difficulties begin.
France is pushing for the adoption of a “Buy European act”, a law for the purchase of European products that can respond to American protectionism, not in the form of a trade war – the Union has no interest in it, especially in full war in Ukraine – but of a global action by the 27 that is up to the stakes, neither more nor less than the risk of deindustrialization of Europe.
The problem is that Germany is reticent, or rather that the coalition in Berlin is divided, as is the case in other spheres. And the same goes for the European Commission.
By dramatizing the situation in Washington, Macron wants to provoke the awakening of Europe, above all after having obtained from Biden the guarantee that Washington will not consider any “Buy European act” as a declaration of economic war. In essence we are facing a blow to three transatlantic shores.
Against the lavish backdrop of Washington, then, Macron’s message was actually directed at the Europeans. We will soon find out if it has been implemented.
(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)