Macron requires suspension of investments in the United States – Blueprint Newspapers Limited

On Thursday, French president Emmanuel Macron asked for a suspension of investments in the United States until the new “brutal and unfounded” rates were clarified by Donald Trump against Europe and the rest of the world.

His comments followed the president Trump by imposing new withdrawals for the US commercial partners, including a rate of 20 % on imports from the European Union.

“Future investments, the investments announced in recent weeks, should be suspended for a while as long as the situation with the United States has not been clarified,” Macron said at a meeting of the French companies in which the French ministers and Prime Minister Francois Bayrou also attended.

Macron has provided that the Americans will be “weaker and poorer” after Trump’s tariff announcement, which described as “brutal and unfounded” and which would have a “enormous impact” on the European economy.

He also invited Europe to be together in terms of response, warning against any unilateral action.

Macron reiterated the position of the French government according to which a “European response” would arrive in “two phases”.

One would arrive in mid -April, turning to the US rates already underway in steel and aluminum. The second would be at the end of April and would be a “more massive response, for the announced rates”, after a study on the affected sectors and coordination with the EU member states.

– “The world is reorganizing” –
After the meeting, the head of the federation of French employers, Patrick Martin, stressed that the situation was “very serious”.

Everyone agreed on the fact that “the world is reorganizing, commercial relations are becoming extremely brutal, the threats are accumulating and the time has come more than ever to accelerate simplification and competitiveness at European and French level,” he said.

Echoing the call of Macron, the company group France Industrie, which represents dozens of important companies, said that French producers affected by the US rates should take into consideration the possibility of rekindling in one way or another, also suspending investment projects in the United States.

“To negotiate from a position of strength, we must be ready to use all the levers available to us,” said the president of the group, Alexandre Saubot.

The French minister of French Manuel Valls defined the decision of the United States to impose different rates to the territories of abroad of France a “profoundly political” gesture that reveals a “accumulation of inconsistencies, absurdities and incompetence”.

The Paris stock market closed more than three percent Thursday after the Trump tariff blitz, the largest daily drop in two years.

Vincent Near, an economist at the center for potential international studies and information, told AFP that Trump ads “exploded” the “basic rules of international trade”, but that the EU was well equipped to respond.

Among other measures, Near has said that EU countries could reduce its imports of goods and services, reduce market access for American companies or even suspend ownership rights for some companies.

The French investments directed in the United States were worth 370 billion dollars in 2023, making it the fifth largest foreign investor in the country, according to the United States’s economic analysis office (Bea).

In comparison, the US direct investments in France the same year have reached $ 142 billion, according to the French Central Bank. They are heavily weighted towards the manufacturing sector, said the treasure of France.

The American Chamber of Commerce in France told AFP that there are more than 4,200 branches of French companies operating in the United States. According to Bea, they employ around 741,000 people.

AFP