Emmanuel Macron calls on China to come and invest in Europe
Emmanuel Macron wants China to rebalance its trade with Europe by investing on the continent and sharing its technologies, otherwise the EU will have to strengthen its trade protections.
In an article published in the Financial Times on Tuesday, December 16, Emmanuel Macron pleads for trade between Europe and China to be more balanced. In particular, he calls on the Chinese to come and invest in Europe, to set up factories there and to share technologies in which China has now taken a head start. He does not cite any specific sector, but the targets are clearly electric vehicles, autonomous driving and even battery recycling. The president's bet is that, if the Chinese come to invest in Europe, this will revive industry and create jobs on our soil.
China realizes a thousand billion dollars in trade surplus with the rest of the world, including 300 billion euros with the European Union, "a current situation which is no longer viable", he estimates.
Once the Americans have established trade barriers, China can no longer continue to dump its low-cost products on the European market.
A possible awakening of Europe?
Emmanuel Macron had already announced it upon returning from his trip to Beijing a week earlier, he is repeating it today because a European Council is being held at the end of the week, with a dinner of heads of state devoted precisely to "geoeconomics".
Next year, France will also hold the presidency of the G7, and Emmanuel Macron intends to take advantage of these deadlines to sound the alarm among his counterparts. He wants to push Europe to wake up, to establish a real balance of power with China, to establish a European preference, and, failing that, to impose customs duties and more protectionism.
For his approach to succeed, Europeans would have to align and be able to form a united front to show their muscles to the Asian giant. Emmanuel Macron, in particular, is banking heavily on the fact that, as Germany is experiencing a trade deficit with China for the first time, it would be more willing to adopt an offensive position, a bet that could be described as risky.
A balance of power favorable to China
Then, does China really have an interest in changing a balance that is so favorable to it? Nothing indicates otherwise. Of course, it needs outlets, because its domestic consumption is less dynamic than expected, but faced with a Europe totally dependent on its minerals and its products, it is difficult to imagine that it will let the rules be dictated.
China will perhaps come to invest in Europe, but on its own terms, by importing, for example, its workforce, as it did in Africa. Emmanuel Macron is therefore taking a risk by calling on the Chinese to come to the Old Continent: this assumes that they will be “cooperative” and will not act as predators. Here again, doubt remains.
