Macron & Scholz consider Sanctioning the USSA

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Scholz and Macron threaten trade retaliation against Biden (Politico; Oct 27, 2022)

BERLIN/PARIS — After publicly falling out, Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron have found something they agree on: mounting alarm over unfair competition from the U.S. and the potential need for Europe to hit back.

The German chancellor and the French president discussed their joint concerns during nearly three-and-a-half hours of talks over a lunch of fish, wine and Champagne in Paris on Wednesday.

They agreed that recent American state subsidy plans represent market-distorting measures that aim to convince companies to shift their production to the U.S., according to people familiar with their discussions. And that is a problem they want the European Union to address.

The meeting of minds on this issue followed public disagreements in recent weeks on key political issues such as energy and defense, fracturing what is often seen as the EU's central political alliance between its two biggest economies.

But even though their lunch came against an awkward backdrop, both leaders agreed that the EU cannot remain idle if Washington pushes ahead with its Inflation Reduction Act, which offers tax cuts and energy benefits for companies investing on U.S. soil, in its current form. Specifically, the recently signed U.S. legislation encourages consumers to “Buy American” when it comes to choosing an electric vehicle — a move particularly galling for major car industries in the likes of France and Germany.

The message from the Paris lunch is: If the U.S. doesn't scale back, then the EU will have to strike back. Similar incentive schemes for companies will be needed to avoid unfair competition or losing investments. That move would risk plunging transatlantic relations into a new trade war.

Macron was the first to make the stark warning public. “We need a Buy European Act like the Americans, we need to reserve [our subsidies] for our European manufacturers,” the French president said Wednesday night in an interview with TV channel France 2, referring specifically to state subsidies for electric cars.

Macron also mentioned similar concerns about state-subsidized competition from China: “You have China that is protecting its industry, the U.S. that is protecting its industry and Europe that is an open house,” Macron said, adding: "[Scholz and I] have a real convergence to move forward on the topic, we had a very good conversation.”

Crucially, Berlin — which has traditionally been more reluctant when it comes to confronting the U.S. in trade disputes — is indeed backing the French push. Scholz agrees that the EU will need to roll out countermeasures similar to the U.S. scheme if Washington refuses to address key concerns voiced by Berlin and Paris, according to people familiar with the chancellor's thinking.

Scholz is not a big fan of Macron’s wording of a "Buy European Act" as it evokes the nearly 90-year-old "Buy American Act," which is often criticized for being protectionist because it favors American companies. But the chancellor shares Macron’s concerns about unfair competitive advantages, the people said.

Earlier this month, Scholz said publicly that Europe will have to discuss the Inflation Reduction Act with the U.S. "in great depth."

In a blow to Germany’s industrial core, chemical giant BASF announced plans Wednesday to reduce its business activities and jobs in Germany, with company chief Martin Brudermüller citing heightened gas prices — which he criticized for being six times as high as in the U.S. — as well as increasing EU regulation as the reason.

“The decisions of a successful company like BASF show that we need to improve the overall attractiveness of Germany as a business location,” German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said in a tweet, vowing to take various measures such as “tax relief for private investments.”

Before bringing out the big guns, though, Scholz and Macron want to try to reach a negotiated solution with Washington. This should be done via a new "EU-U.S. Taskforce on the Inflation Reduction Act" that was established during a meeting between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Mike Pyle on Tuesday.

The taskforce of EU and U.S. officials will meet via videoconference toward the end of next week, underlining the seriousness of the European push.

On top of that, EU trade ministers will gather for an informal meeting in Prague next Monday, with U.S. trade envoy Katherine Tai planning to attend to discuss the tensions.

In Brussels, the Commission is also looking with concern at Macron's wording of a "Buy European Act," which evokes protectionist tendencies that the EU institution has long sought to fight.

"Every measure we take needs to be in line with the World Trade Organization rules," a Commission official said, adding that Europe and the U.S. should resolve differences via talks and "not descend into tit-for-tat trade war measures as we experienced them under [former U.S. President Donald] Trump."

The more the USSA throws its reserve currency weight around, and starts endless "small" wars, and more lately, rhetoric about nuclear war, the more promises to other powers that it breaks - such as the one made to Mikhail Gorbachev as the Soviet Union was collapsing that in return for the reunification of Germany, the USSA would not move the borders of NATO eastward (think the Ukraine) nor station any NATO or American troops in the former Warsaw pact nations- the more it breaks promises it has no intention of keeping (the American Indians know something of this history) the more it becomes a pariah government which no one will ever trust again, and that's quite a proposition for such a short national history. I know the whole proposition sounds like what my mom used to call a "knee slapper," something so hilariously not true it makes you wonder why anyone would ever believe it.

The USSA has been hell-bent on establishing its own global, worldwide, unipolar hegemony since the end of the Soviet Union, and making everyone else cow-tow to the will of increasingly zanily insane Swampington DC uni-party, that even our allies are thinking twice about being our ally, and that includes our oldest ally, France, without which we wouldn't even be a Country, thank you Admiral Francois Joseph Paul Comte de Grasse.

The hegemony of the uni-party wokery dominating American culture, which appears to want to make childhood transgender surgery some sort of human right, is probably not going to play too well in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, and probably even less well in Budapest, Warsaw, Moscow, Cairo, Tel Aviv, Tehran, New Dehli, Tokyo, Beijing, Taipei, Buenos Aires, Brazil, Santiago, Algiers, Tripoli,... well, you get the idea. Threatening to rain bombs down on people not willing to cow-tow to American wokery is not helping matters either.

In the midst of this, for some time that pariah status is where the sclerotic management class of the USSA is leading us, and it appears to be happening according to the above article.

Probably should not to take Macron and Herr Scholz too seriously, not the least of which is the rising tide of opposition to their whole globalist schemes within their own countries. But the more serious reason not to take them too seriously is that Germany's military was gutted by "die verrueckte Frau Merkel" and her lap-poodle-in-chief and former minister of defenselessness, Ursula "Lyin" von der Leyen whose family roots go back to slave plantations in America. These two wretched drunk on power crazy women also managed to completely gut Germany's nuclear and coal power industry leaving that country reliant on France for protection, and power.

In a nutshell, if you were any self-respecting leader of a European nation, and especially one of the European powers, would you look at the USSA as an ally that not only you trust but respect? Would you want to turn your future little Frenchman, or German, or Dutchman, or Italian, or Spaniard, or Hungarian, over to a country where some Marxist fanatical political leadership thinks it's entirely ok to perform sex change surgery on minors, and views it as a human right, to a country where such views, while still a minority, are nevertheless widespread enough to be mouthed by some in leadership positions?  Would you want to rely on a military where similar doctrines were/are being forced on its soldiers, sailors, airmen and recruits? GTFO!!

My point being: without a dramatic, and deep seated course change in the USSA, one that will out live the merely 4-8 year reprieve from the nonsense that American elections often bring, and swing the culture back to some sort of genuine humanity and rationality, would you want to be our ally? Else,  would you be thinking, like the late Shinzo Abe, and now apparently Emanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz, that maybe, just maybe, the old alliance is not working out as billed, and that it's time for some basic reassessment and fundamental readjustment?

Some geo-political leaders have recognized the writing on the wall that America is simply no longer a reliable ally, it's domestic politics and culture are too broken to promote long-term stability in its relations with its allies. It's the recognition by the European "big two" that the USA is "not-agreement-capable", as the Russians say.