President Emmanuel Macron and US secretary of commerce Wilbur Ross laid out conflicting arguments in the trade dispute between Europe and the United States at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) ministerial meeting in Paris on May 30th.
It was a dialogue of the deaf. Macron made a fervent plea for “strong multilateralism” and emphasised the necessity of “avoiding the worst”. He compared the present to the 1930s, when “trade war rapidly became war, full stop”.
“When a country [the US] is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win,” Trump tweeted last March 2nd.
Macron pleaded for "a profound renovation" of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). "We invented the rules, and agreed in sovereign fashion. This framework must be preserved . . . The WTO enables what? To avoid unilaterally, unco-operative measures! To correct unfair trade! It makes it possible to avoid economic warfare."
Anticipating Trump's announcement the following day, Macron noted that the OECD was addressing the global steel glut, at the request of the G20. "We cannot resolve it though bilateral trade wars! We can only solve it through the collective commitment of the international community."
Macron proposed that the US, EU, China and Japan begin negotiations on reforming the WTO at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires next autumn.
Wilbur Ross was not impressed. The US is fed up with “endless talking” and prefers “bilateral actions”, said the secretary of commerce. Regarding the OECD’s mediation in the steel dispute, “there have been seven meetings in a year and a half, with no definite result . . . that’s the whole problem with free trade. People talk a lot,” Ross said.
“Every country has a duty to protect its citizens . . . that may be a populist point of view, but it’s ours,” he concluded.
