French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday that he has agreed with his U.S. counterpart, Joe Biden, to «fix» the consequences of U.S. policy on subsidies, after members of the French government criticized such economic policies.
Macron has assured that he raised with the US president his concerns about the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a measure that encourages, for example, the production of semiconductors, and that the French president considers that they «favor the imbalance».
«We had a very good, frank and fruitful discussion (…). What we decided with President Biden is precisely to solve this problem. It is repairable», explained the French leader in an interview on the program ’60 Minutes’ of the CBS network.
«My goal was to say that it is urgent to raise this problem. I did. It was urgent to discuss it in depth (…), it is urgent to solve it. We can do it», he assured, before remarking that this state visit has had «many positive results».
The French president asserted that the «main interest» is to protect the middle classes, both in Paris and in Washington, as well as to confront China at the commercial level. «But the result of the recent decision (the IRA law) on this momentum, I would say, is bad for Europe,» he added.
«I think if the day after the conflict the result is to have a weaker Europe as a large part of its industry would have been simply killed, that will not be in the interest of the U.S. administration or society,» he has criticized.
Macron and Biden met last week in the first official visit to Washington by a foreign president since the start of restrictions over COVID-19.
The visit began with an official reception at the White House in a meeting in which the two leaders wanted to claim each other as allies in a global context marked by challenges from other powers such as Moscow or Beijing.
