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American cheeses and delicate trade questions: Biden receives Macron at the White House

The alliance with the United States "is stronger than anything", but Europe must not become an "adjustment variable" at a time when Joe Biden throws all the forces of the first world power into the rivalry with the China, the French president said on Wednesday.

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American cheeses and delicate trade questions: Biden receives Macron at the White House

The alliance with the United States "is stronger than anything", but Europe must not become an "adjustment variable" at a time when Joe Biden throws all the forces of the first world power into the rivalry with the China, the French president said on Wednesday.

Cannon shots and hymns on his arrival, fireside meeting in the Oval Office, joint press conference and gala dinner: Emmanuel Macron will be entitled to all the pageantry associated with a state visit.

He is the first to whom the American president has given such treatment since his inauguration in January 2021.

The octogenarian Democrat is strong, after the convulsions of the presidency of Donald Trump, to strengthen ties with the traditional partners of the United States, including their "oldest ally", the formula devoted to Washington to designate France.

However, it did not start very well with his French counterpart. In September 2021, the United States announced a spectacular new military alliance with the United Kingdom and Australia, AUKUS, blowing France a huge submarine contract with Canberra.

Joe Biden, without going back in the least on the merits of the decision, had recognized a "clumsiness". He has since done everything to appease Emmanuel Macron, a process which analysts say culminates in this solemn welcome to Washington.

Which does not mean that everything is rosy: the French president deplored on Wednesday in a particularly offensive tone the “super aggressive” economic decisions for European companies by his American counterpart.

Joe Biden wants to revitalize his industry and reassure a middle class shaken by globalization, while standing up to Beijing. This requires an uninhibited defense of American interests, on the military level - which AUKUS illustrated - as well as industrial.

Emmanuel Macron judged on Wednesday that the "risk is that faced with the challenges of the time, the United States first looks at the United States, it's normal (...) and then looks at the rivalry with the China, and, in a way, that Europe and France become a sort of adjustment variable".

In particular, the American president passed a gigantic investment program, the "Inflation Reduction Act", which plans to subsidize electric cars... as long as they are "Made in the USA."

- Diplomacy and gala -

"You may be going to solve your problem, but you will make mine worse," Emmanuel Macron told American parliamentarians, insisting on the need for France also to support the middle class and employment.

These choices "will fragment the West", he then hammered before the French community. They "can only work if there is coordination between us, if we decide together, if we resynchronize".

After this charge, Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron went to dinner with Joe and Jill Biden in an Italian restaurant in Washington for a moment that was both private and "political", according to an adviser to the Elysée.

He assured that the French president would make this same "central remark" to his host, himself very attached to the fate of the "middle class".

Beyond these discussions, the two leaders will certainly want to display their agreement on the response to be given to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

And it will be interesting to hear them on China: Washington would like the Europeans to share more of its concern over Beijing's all-out rise to power, but France is keen to chart its own diplomatic path.

These serious questions will be put aside for a moment during a gala dinner on Thursday evening.

On tables loaded with candlesticks and flowers in the colors of the two countries will be served lobster, beef and an orange cake.

But also – and First Lady Jill Biden particularly insisted on this point – American cheeses. Including a blue from Oregon which was the first American production to win the World Cheese Championships in 2019.

Toasts will be made with an American sparkling wine. But in glasses made in France.

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