Here the season of transatlantic quarrels has returned. But everyone has their own style. When Donald Trump castigated French cheeses and big Mercedes in the streets of New York, Joe Biden prefers to look at the sky and talk about the climate that changes to the same ends: Restore the “Made in the USA”.
This Tuesday, November 8, the twenty-seven members of the European Union meet in Brussels to try to find a common response to the new American offensive. Already, the French Minister of the Economy asked the European Commission, in an interview in several European media on November 7, to consider a “strong” response. It must be said that the President of the United States did not go there with a dead hand.
A year after having buried the ax of war between Airbus and Boeing and appeased the conflict on the taxation of European steel and aluminum, he had a curiously called text adopted by the congress in August ” Inflation reduction plan “. If it has a component on the reduction of medical and pharmaceutical costs, most of this law consists of a massive aid of $ 370 billion (370 billion euros) with renewable energies.
Large exporters
It will have little impact on inflation, but a lot on American energy and industrial strategy. Especially since this boost is added to the tens of billions already poured to finance the return of electronic flea plants to the country. He intends, in fact, openly promoting the local industry. Witness, this 7,500 dollar electric cars grant granted only to vehicles produced on American soil and also with American batteries.
This manifest discrimination exasperates European governments, especially large car producers like Germany and France. But, basically, Joe Biden shares the same dream as the president of the commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and her commissioner in the internal market, Thierry Breton: rely on the climate transition to relocate the industry.
Everyone, however, has their little political concerns. Joe Biden may have to, after the mid-term elections of this November 8, moderate his dreams of ecological virtue, and the Europeans divide on the procedure to follow. The Germans, larger industrialists and exporters, and who therefore have the most to lose in American measures, are less martial than the French, champions of relocation. But transatlantic relations are no longer a paradox.