NEW French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said he discussed with Chancellor Rishi Sunak at IMF about how supply chain crisis “more difficult” for Britain outside Single Market. He told me “when you ask for more truck drivers.. single market helps facing these bottlenecks”...
In interview with me in DC, Le Maire also said G7 discussed replacing supply chains stretching to China, Taiwan and Korea and rebuilding them in western democracies “building these new value chains among partners among friends has been one of the solutions discussed within G7”
Le Maire reflected that President Biden sounded “Gaullist” in his speech this week saying the US would “never again” become overly reliant on one country or one person for supplies. “I'm a Gaullist. So, I’m fully supportive to that kind of approach...”
“We don't want to be dependent, I will say on strategic assets, of other countries, like just like semiconductors. the lack of semiconductors coming from either Taiwan, South Korea, leads to a situation where our automotive industry is obliged to reduce production by 40-50%”...
“I fully share the point of view expressed by President Biden, this is a Gaullist approach, a Gaullist statement. And I think that this proves that Gaullism is a modern approach of globalisation,” the French finance minister told me.
Le MAire said that France & Europe were building this approach internally firstly to “build these new value chains for green hydrogen, for artificial intelligence, for the cloud, for semiconductors, we want to gather the financial force of Germany, Italy, Spain, France & Poland”
Thereafter UK could cooperate, Le maire said, but added: “when you have a careful look at current world situation, have on one side, the US. On other rise of China. There is one single place left. This will not be for the UK. This will be for Europe. Let's be clear about that”...
plenty of stuff to question in Le Maire’s worldview of US Gaullism, G7 reshoring from Asia, & squeeze on GB - but France was not the only country talking this way at the IMF. post pandemic crisis may be leading to some permanently changed geoeconomics.. bbc.co.uk/news/business-…
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