French President Emmanuel Macron said he had threatened Beijing with tariffs during his state visit to China if there was no action taken to reduce the country’s ever-widening trade deficit with the European Union.
During Macron’s visit earlier in December, he urged China to boost co-operation on “unsustainable” global trade imbalances, geopolitics and the environment. “I tried to explain to the Chinese that their trade surplus is unsustainable because they are killing their own customers, particularly by no longer importing much from us,” Macron said in an interview published yesterday by French daily Les Echos.
“The EU’s goods trade deficit with China has ballooned by nearly 60 per cent since 2019, while France’s trade balance with the $19 trillion economy continues to widen.
Macron said the European industry was in a tough position, caught between US President Donald Trump’s protectionism and China, which “is hitting the heart of the European industrial and innovation model”.
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