(MENAFN- The Peninsula)
Washington: Visiting French President Emmanuel Macron delivered blunt criticism to American lawmakers and business leaders Wednesday when he called out US industrial subsidies as being extremely harmful to his nation's companies.
With trade disagreements looming over his state visit to the United States, Macron sat down for lunch with members of Congress, company executives and government officials in Washington and warned that such help for US firms could 'kill a lot of jobs.'
'This is super aggressive for our business people,' Macron said at the working lunch in the ornate Library of Congress, ahead of what are expected to be tense trade talks with President Joe Biden.
'You will perhaps fix your issue, but you will increase my problem,' he said, referring to the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden's signature green industry policy that recently came into effect.
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The IRA will pour billions of dollars into climate-friendly technologies, with strong backing for American-made products. Europeans fear an unfair US advantage in sectors where they are already reeling due in part to the war in Ukraine.
'I think this regulation cannot fly for the US alone,' the French leader said, warning that if the broader trade issues are not synchronized it will 'kill a lot of jobs.'
'Put yourself in my shoes,' he pleaded, adding that 'nobody called me when the IRA was in discussion' earlier this year.
Macron suggested that exceptions for European firms could be worked into the law, but even those might 'create divisions between Europeans.'
'So we will have to bridge the gap,' he said, urging Washington to coordinate more directly with Europe on trade issues.
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