US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed during a state visit earlier this week to “fix” problems stemming from US legislation including subsidies for products manufactured in that country, Macron said in an attempt to assuage European concerns.
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is a new $430 billion bill that offers massive subsidies to American-made products and aims to address the climate crisis and promote renewable energy.
But European leaders say the legislative package is unfair to non-US companies and would hit their economies hard as Europe grapples with the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
“What we have decided with President Biden is precisely to fix this matter. And they can be fixed,” Macron told CBS’s 60 Minutes in an interview published on Sunday.
Speaking alongside Macron on Thursday, Biden said: “There are adjustments we can make that can fundamentally make it easier for European countries to participate and or be on their own.”