John Podesta is an old Biscard of politics, as we meet in the American series. This 74 -year -old Democrat served in the shadow of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, led the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and is today advisor to Joe Biden. And as such responsible for the implementation of the famous Inflation Act Act (IRA), which intends to reindustrialize America, thanks to massive subsidies to the environmental transition.
Artisan of the great adventure of globalization of the 1990s, under Clinton, he is now responsible for closing this chapter without mood. “We are not going to apologize that the US taxpayers’ dollars must finance American investments and jobs,” he said in an interview with Financial Times on Friday, February 24, in the tone of the evidence.
An obviousness which has germinated an upheaval in international trade and a serious problem for Europe, built around the philosophy of free trade. “The United States completed and accelerated its economic disengagement started since the end of Bretton Woods in 1971,” said economist Véronique Rich-Flores, in his last note of February 24.
“Risk of fragmentation “
On an official visit to the United States, on November 30, 2022, President Emmanuel Macron already underlined a “risk of fragmentation of the West”. Since then, this European panic has been fueled by the very clear messages of the industrialists of the Old Continent, which threaten to favor the United States in its new investment choices, taking into account the tax gifts offered and the energy price.
It is not fortuitous that American measures concern the energy transition. In addition to the urgency to act, it is the most dependent sector of public subsidies for its development. Latest example, the attempt of wind electricity producers at sea, in the United Kingdom, who, according to the Financial Times, try to renegotiate their contracts with the British government.
On the other side of the Channel, the energy projects accelerate, from Rome to Berlin, via Paris or Amsterdam. Should it be done by reserving aid for European investments and jobs? The French are for; The major exporters of the North, Germany in mind, fiercely against, because they fear the gear of the retaliations which decimated the economy of the 1930s. Finding an agreement requires to change the European software and to get along with the Americans. It is not won.