Trade war averted? Macron gets Biden to ‘tweak’ his industrial subsidies – POLITICO
Posted by M. C. on December 2, 2022
Foreign countries complain they don’t get enough US taxpayer money. Washington fixes that.
French President Emmanuel Macron snatched an unexpected win from his U.S counterpart during a visit to Washington on Thursday, getting Joe Biden to suggest that European companies could benefit from a controversial American subsidies package.
Fury has been boiling over in Europe after it became clear that Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — a $369 billion package for green industry — could drain investment out of the EU and into the U.S. Big car-making nations like France and Germany had complained that the U.S. law was potentially illegal for discriminating against foreign companies in the electric vehicle sector and encouraging consumers to “Buy American.”
Macron’s visit to the U.S. had been trailed as a doomed last-ditch effort to secure a truce over Washington’s largesse before the EU and U.S. would lurch into a subsidy race or full-blown trade war with countervailing tariffs.
Europeans have been pressing to receive the same rights as Mexicans and Canadians to benefit from the green cash bonanza, but with little prospect of success. For weeks, the French have been campaigning for European partners to agree to their own rival subsidy package, including a “Buy European” component.
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