Washington – “The alliance between France and the United States is stronger than anything else”. With these words, French President Emmanuel Macron began his speech at the French embassy in Washington, where the head of the Elysée is on an official visit and will meet Joe Biden in a few hours for a bilateral meeting in the White House. Addressing the French community at the diplomatic headquarters, Macron asked that they “seek together to live up to what history has sealed between us, an alliance stronger than anything else”. The head of the Elysée also underlined that his second state visit to the US, after that of 2018, “demonstrates the strength, the bond between the United States and France”.
After the reference to the importance of the link with the great overseas ally, Macron has changed tack, anticipating a couple of issues that will certainly be on the bilateral table with Biden. First, the dangers that lie behind the US investment and subsidy program to help American companies, which, in Macron’s words, risks “fragmenting the West”. To the American deputies “I told with great frankness – added Macron -, with friendship that what has happened in recent months is a challenge for us: the choices made, whose objectives I however share, in particular the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act, a program of environmental and social reforms and investments for American companies) are choices that will fragment the West”.
The other point on which the European head of state wanted to warn the White House is the “risk” that “Europe and France become a sort of adjustment variable” in the rivalry between the United States and China, the two major world powers. “The risk – explained Macron – is that, faced with the challenges of the time, the United States first looks to the US, which is normal, and then looks at the rivalry with China. And that therefore, in a certain sense, the ‘Europe and France become a sort of variable”.