Paris, December 7 (EFECOM). – French President Emmanuel Macron is warning China that if it does not cooperate to reduce its trade surplus, the European Union (EU) will be forced to respond with measures in the coming months, including tariffs like those imposed by US President Donald Trump.
In an interview published this Sunday by the French business newspaper Les Echos after his visit to China from Wednesday to Friday, in which, among other things, the EU’s deficit with the Asian giant of more than 300 billion euros in 2024 was discussed, Macron proposes a cooperation agenda with Beijing that would include much more Chinese investment in Europe.
He explains that he told Chinese leaders that “if they do not respond, we Europeans will be forced in the coming months to take strict measures and not cooperate like the United States, for example on tariffs on Chinese products.”
The French leader, who discussed this possibility with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, believes that the EU must respond as this is a matter of life and death for its industry, which, on the one hand, faces new US tariffs and competition from China, which it considers unfair in many respects.
Macron recognizes that the challenge he poses to Beijing requires building a common European front, which is not easy, especially because Germany is “still not fully in line with us,” as many of its companies have a presence in China and fear the consequences, although Berlin is becoming aware of the “imbalances that also affect it.”
He emphasizes that he tried to explain to the Chinese that their trade surplus with the Europeans “cannot be maintained because they are killing their own customers” and, above all, criticizes them for hardly buying European products.
If, on the one hand, the massive arrival of Chinese products leaves the European industrial model, historically based on machine tools and the automotive sector, in a very poor state, Trump’s tariffs exacerbate the problem because they divert to Europe part of the flow of exports from China that went to the United States.
Macron’s diagnosis is that Europeans are being shaken by the two largest economic powers and the result is that Europe has become an “adjustment market” and that is “the worst possible scenario”.
Faced with this situation, the French President insists that Europe must also respond and “launch a competitiveness policy that includes simplification, the deepening of the internal market, investment in innovation, a fair design of our borders, the completion of our customs union and a reaffirmed agenda for Europe’s economic security.”
This should be achieved through the implementation of “a European preference and an adapted monetary policy”.
In other words, the EU must apply former European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi’s famous report on competitiveness and assert its internal market, which is the largest in the world, as well as the fact that the EU represents the largest reserve of savings, most of which flows to the United States due to lack of sufficient unification and lack of attractiveness.
For this change to come about, according to the French President, some concepts and measures must be changed, such as the fact that the ECB continues to sell government bonds that it has in its portfolio, which, in his opinion, risks raising long-term interest rates, slowing down economic activity and strengthening the euro.
Macron also suggests that China direct some of its capital to the EU, as the Europeans did with technology transfers twenty years ago.
It is about exploiting its technological or industrial progress in a dozen sectors such as batteries, lithium refining, wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, electric vehicles, heat pumps, electronic products, recycling technologies, robotics or components.
But he sets one condition: “Chinese investments in Europe must not be predatory, that is, they must not have the aim of hegemony or the creation of dependencies.” EFECOM
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