French President Emmanuel Macron had a clear message to European businesses following the announcement of US ‘reciprocal tariffs’: stop investing there.
“It is important that future investments, the investments announced over the last few weeks, should be put on hold for some time until we have clarified things with the US,” the president said to business representatives of impacted sectors at the Elysée Palace on Thursday (4 April).
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“What message would we send by having major European players investing billions of euros in the American economy at a time when [the US] are hitting us?” He highlighted it was time for “collective solidarity” as he tried to dissuade French businesses from making deals with President Trump.
Whether companies will follow his advice is likely be more of an economic decision than a political one. With the new tariffs, if companies do not invest directly in the US they risk being priced out of the market entirely. While they could theoretically look for other markets, it will be hard to find a commercial equivalent to the US.
The rallying cry comes a month after French shipping giant CMA CGM announced plans to invest $20bn (€18.21bn) to develop maritime infrastructure. Trump took credit for the investment pledge, as he has done with other billion-dollar announcements from the Middle East, Japanese bank SoftBank, OpenAI and more.
According to French Government spokeswoman Sophie Primas, France was pushing for the EU to target US tech companies and expand measures into the services sector as part of their retaliation. The EU is already pursuing multiple major cases against major US tech companies, which Trump has said would be factored into further tariff decisions.
Macron said the decision to apply a 20% tariff on all EU exports to the US was “brutal and unfounded”.
“We need to continue to accelerate at the European level with an agenda of trade protection,” he said, referring to EU duties on Chinese electric vehicles applied earlier this year.
“We are not naive, we are going to protect ourselves,” the French President said.
