France is ratcheting up pressure on Brussels to hit back against what it sees as China’s unfair advantages in export sectors such as electric vehicles — but the EU is wary about the risks of triggering an all-out trade conflict with Beijing.
Over recent years, Brussels has upgraded its trade defense arsenal and now Paris wants the European Commission — which steers trade policy for the 27-country bloc — to use this new weaponry and show that it is not simply posturing.
Whether France will win round the rest of the EU, especially Germany, is likely to top the agenda when EU leaders meet at a summit later this month. Berlin and others were stung by Brussels’ disastrous attempt to use EU trade tools against Beijing in 2013 and are likely to advocate a more cautious route so as not to provoke Beijing into rolling out countermeasures against EU industry.
The most controversial French idea is that the EU should open a probe paving the way for tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. The main European fear is that Beijing can use lavish state support to churn out unfairly cheap vehicles that can flood the EU market at a speed and scale that threaten the EU’s own e-car production.
France has been behind the curve on technology and science for some time and looks to trade barriers until it catches up (which it never does). When the UK came out with an effective covid jab the French did all that they could to rubbish it across the EU as their scientists were going to produce an effective vaccine which they did not do:
The French, like the USA is attempting to reindustrialize their economy and various plans are always being rolled out (usually at election time):
Emmanuel Macron has given a taste of his likely re-election bid by announcing a €30bn (£25.4bn) plan to “reindustrialise” France and make it a global leader on green hydrogen, create new, smaller nuclear reactors and invest in French television series and video games to challenge foreign offerings on platforms like Netflix.
Unfortunately France and the rest of the EU are inward focused and don’t appreciate that the 7 billion people outside The West see them as more and more irrelevant to them.