Presidents Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron are celebrating the long-standing U.S.-French relationship, but these are friends with differences. The French leader is using his visit to Washington to sharply criticize aspects of his ally’s signature climate law as a bad deal for Europe.
What You Need To Know
- Presidents Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron are celebrating the long-standing U.S.-French relationship, but these are friends with differences
- The French leader isn’t hiding his displeasure with aspects of Biden’s signature climate law that Macron said will have an enormous negative impact on European companies
- Biden welcomed Macron to the White House on Thursday for a visit that will conclude with the first state dinner of the Biden administration
- Macron has made clear that he and other European leaders are deeply concerned about U.S. incentives that favor American-made climate technology, including electric vehicles
Biden will honor Macron with the first state dinner of his presidency on Thursday evening.
“Because he’s my friend,” was Biden’s response when asked why he chose France for the visit as he and Macron walked down the colonnade to the West Wing, the French president giving him a friendly pat on the back.
President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron walk along the Colonnade of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022. (Kevin Lamarque/Pool Photo via AP)
The presidents first began talks in the Oval Office that officials from both sides said were expected to largely center on efforts to stay united in their response to Russia’s war in Ukraine and to coordinate their approach to an increasingly assertive China.
Seated beside Macron, Biden hailed France’s support since the Revolutionary War until today, calling it a “real inflection point” of change around the world.
Macron echoed that idea, citing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We want to fix the direct and indirect consequences of the war on our economies and our people. But at the same time, we want to prepare for future generations,” he said, also mentioning the private dinner he and first lady Brigitte Macron had with the Bidens Wednesday night.
“Thank you and your wife for the wonderful dinner we had yesterday, for the friendship and and really for the quality of the discussion we have together,” Macron said. “When we look at our common history, this friendship, always prevailed.”
President Joe Biden meets with French President Emmanuel Macron in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022, during a State Visit. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Hundreds of people gathered on the South Lawn on a sunny but chilly morning for a pomp-filled official arrival ceremony that included a 21-gun salute and review of troops. Ushers distributed small French and American flags to the guests.
“It’s an honor, a genuine honor to host you for the first state visit of my administration and to celebrate the courage, strength and vitality of the great friendship between France and the United States of America,” Biden said in a speech just after Macron’s arrival.
Biden listed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, food insecurity, climate change and ended the AIDS epidemic — World AIDS Day is Friday — among the issues the U.S., France and other nations are working together to address.
“President Macron, you’ve heard me speak before about the inflection point we stand at in history and how the choices we make today and in the years ahead will determine the course of our world for decades to come,” Biden said. “And the United States could not ask for a better partner in this work than France. For centuries, we’ve come together, charted a course toward a world of greater freedom, greater opportunity, greater dignity and greater peace.”
President Joe Biden speaks as French President Emmanuel Macron looks on, during a State Arrival Ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022. First Lady Jill Biden and Brigitte Macron of France, stand left. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Macron said that because of the war in Ukraine and other crises facing the two nations, “we need to become brothers in arms once more.”
“This spirit of fraternity must enable us to build an agenda of ambition and hope, as our two countries share the same faith in freedom, in democratic values, in empowerment through education and work, and in progress through science and knowledge,” he said.
Macron also spoke out against anti-democratic efforts around the world.
“Our democracies on both sides of the ocean are being shaken by the same doubts as to our ability to be sufficiently strong and effective when it comes to the challenges we share of climate to politics to technology,” Macron said. “They’re in doubt in the face of reluctance, hate speech, false information and today’s fears.”
Biden echoed similar themes in his remarks.
“France and the United States are once again defending the democratic values and universal human rights which are the hearts of both our nations,” the president said. “We are proving to people around the world that democracies deliver from our joint leadership.”
Macron has made clear that he and other European leaders are concerned about the incentives in a new climate-related law that favor American-made climate technology, including electric vehicles.
He criticized the legislation, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, during a luncheon Wednesday with U.S. lawmakers and again during a speech at the French Embassy. Macron said that while the Biden administration’s efforts to curb climate change should be applauded, the subsidies would be an enormous setback for European companies.
“The choices that have been made … are choices that will fragment the West,” Macron said. He said the legislation “creates such differences between the United States of America and Europe that all those who work in many companies (in the U.S.), they will just think, ‘We don’t make investments any more on the other side of the Atlantic.'”
He also said major industrial nations need to do more to address climate change and promote biodiversity.
In an interview that aired Thursday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Macron said the U.S. and France were working together well on the war in Ukraine and geopolitics overall, but not on “some economic issues.” The U.S. climate bill and semiconductor legislation, he said, were not properly coordinated with Europe and created “the absence of a level playing field.”
Earlier, he had criticized a deal reached at a recent climate summit in Egypt in which the United States and other wealthy nations agreed to help pay for the damage that an overheating world is inflicting on poor countries. The deal includes few details on how it will be paid for, and Macron said a more comprehensive approach is needed — “not just a new fund we decided which will not be funded and even if it is funded, it will not be rightly allocated.”
As for the Inflation Reduction Act, the European Union has expressed concern that tax credits, including those aimed at encouraging Americans to buy electric vehicles, would discriminate against European producers and break World Trade Organization rules.
Germany’s Economy Minister Robert Habeck said Wednesday that he believes parts of the law aren’t compatible with the WTO.
“I believe that this view is largely shared by those countries that are committed to a multilateral trading order,” he told reporters in Berlin. “The Americans know that we see it that way and the European Commission will have told them this too.”
Macron planned to make his case to U.S. officials against the subsidies, underscoring that it’s crucial for “Europe, like the U.S., to come out stronger … not weaker” as the world emerges from the tumult of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to a senior French government official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity to preview the private talks.
Biden administration officials have countered that the legislation goes a long way in helping the U.S. to meet global goals to curb climate change.
Macron raised eyebrows earlier this month in a speech at a summit in Bangkok when he referred to the U.S. and China as “two big elephants” that are the cusp of creating “a big problem for the rest of jungle.” His visit to Washington also comes as both the U.S. and France are keeping an eye on China after protests broke out last weekend in several mainland cities and Hong Kong over Beijing’s “zero COVID” strategy.
Macron and his wife, Brigitte, came to the U.S. bearing gifts carefully tailored to their American hosts, including a vinyl and CD of the original soundtrack from the 1966 film “Un Homme et une Femme,” which the Bidens went to see on their first date, according to the palace.
Macron will be hosted by Harris for a lunch at the State Department before the evening state dinner for some 350 guests, a glitzy gala to take place in an enormous tented pavilion constructed on the White House South Lawn.
