The presidents Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron exhibited this Thursday the solid alliance between United States and France despite disagreements over the US industrial recovery plan, described as “aggressive” by Paris.
(Read here: The US supports “total peace” and has not expressed concern: Defense Ministry)
“The United States could not ask for a better partner to work with than France,” Biden said in a brief statement, stressing that the alliance with France remains “essential.” “Our common destiny is to respond together” to the world’s challenges since “our two nations are brothers in the defense of freedom,” the French president agreed.
Like Biden, Macron noted that the two countries have fought many wars together. Referring to the Western alliance that helps Ukraine to fight against the Russian invasion, Macron said that we must “return to being brothers in arms”.
Macron and his wife Brigitte were received in style at the White House, with all the honors of a state visit. Cannon shots and hymns upon arrival, meeting
by the fireplace in the Oval Office, joint press conference and gala dinner.
This is the reception given to Macron, the first president to whom Biden dispenses this treatment since his inauguration in January 2021. The octogenarian Democrat is doing his best, after the convulsions of the Republican presidency donald trumpin strengthening ties with the United States’ traditional partners, including its “oldest ally”, as Washington describes France.
The mess of the submarines
And that did not start very well with his French counterpart. In September 2021, the United States announced a dramatic new military alliance with the UK and Australia, AUKUS, which caused France to lose a huge submarine contract with Canberra. Biden did not back down in the slightest on the substance of the decision but acknowledged a “foolishness.”
Since then, he has done everything possible to appease Macron, a process that analysts say culminates in this solemn welcome to Washington. Which is not to say that everything is rosy: the French president deplored this Wednesday in a particularly offensive tone the “super aggressive” economic decisions for European companies by his American counterpart.
Our common destiny is to respond together to the challenges of the world since our two nations are brothers in the defense of freedom.
The United States and the European Union “are not on an equal footing” due to the US subsidies provided for in the great climate plan of the Democratic president, which favor products “manufactured in the United States”, he lamented again this Thursday, interviewed by the network abc tv. Biden wants to reinvigorate his industry and reassure a middle class shaken by globalization, while he takes on Beijing.
This requires an all-out defense of US interests, both at the military level, as it did with AUKUS, as industrial. Macron judged on Wednesday that the risk is that “the United States first looks at the United States, it is normal (…) and then looks at the rivalry with China, and, in a way, that Europe and France become a kind of adjustment variable”.
The US president approved a gigantic investment program, the “Inflation Reduction Act”, which provides for subsidies for electric cars… as long as they are “made in the USA”.
Diplomacy and gala
“They may solve your problem, but they will make mine worse,” Macron told US lawmakers, stressing the need for France to support the middle class and also jobs. These options will “fragment the West”, he later stressed to the French community.
“They can only work if there is coordination between us, if we decide together, if we get back in sync.” Following this accusation, Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron dined Wednesday with Joe and Jill Biden at an Italian restaurant in Washington at a moment that was both private and “political”, according to an adviser to the Elysée, seat of the French presidency.
Beyond these discussions, the two leaders will surely want to show their unity in their response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Before going to the White House on Thursday, Macron said that he will soon talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
And Biden and Macron are very likely to speak out on China. Washington would like the Europeans to share more of its concern over Beijing’s rise, but France wants to chart its own diplomatic path. These issues will be left aside during the gala dinner on Thursday.
Lobster, beef and an orange cake will be served on tables decorated with chandeliers and flowers in the colors of the two countries. But also – and First Lady Jill Biden was particularly insistent on this point – American cheeses, including an Oregon blue that in 2019 won a world championship. All washed down with American sparkling wine but, yes, in glasses made in France.
AFP
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