French Prime Minister François Bayrou is criticizing the trade deal struck by President Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as an act of “submission” by the European Union (EU).
“It is a dark day when an alliance of free peoples, united to affirm their values and defend their interests, resolves to submission,” Bayrou said in a post on social platform X early Monday.
The agreement sets tariffs at 15 percent for European imports, including automobiles. That’s lower than the 30 percent tariff Trump had threatened to impose on the EU but higher than some European officials would have liked to see — especially after decades of enjoying low single-digit tariffs for most exports to the U.S.
As part of the deal, the EU pledged to purchase $750 billion worth of energy from the U.S. and agreed to invest in the U.S. by $600 billion more than the current investments for other goods.
French President Emmanuel Macron has not commented publicly on the deal, but other French officials have joined Bayrou in attacking it as unbalanced.
France’s deputy minister for European Affairs, Benjamin Haddad, said Europeans must “fight to continue seeking trade balance with the United States” and called for Europe to activate anti-coercion mechanism to tax U.S. digital services or exclude them from public agreements.
“The current situation is not satisfactory and cannot be sustainable. The free trade that has brought shared prosperity to both sides of the Atlantic since the end of the Second World War is now rejected by the United States, which is choosing economic coercion and complete disregard for WTO rules. This is a structural change. We must quickly draw the consequences or risk fading away,” Haddad wrote in a post on X, referring to the World Trade Organization.
“This is both an economic and political challenge,” he continued. “Believing that concessions can address it will only encourage predation abroad and the rejection of Europe within our borders by our citizens.”
Laurent Saint-Martin, minister delegate for foreign trade and French citizens abroad, told France Inter in a radio interview Monday, “The good news is that there is an agreement, and therefore our companies have visibility, and there is stability in the transatlantic trade relationship.”
He added, however, that “this agreement is not balanced, and therefore we will have to continue working,” pointing to U.S. digital services, where, he said, the U.S. “has a surplus.”
“Donald Trump has said for months and months that he wanted to rebalance a trade relationship that is to the detriment of the United States but he only spoke of goods. If we take services, it’s the opposite. So it’s up to us to do this work of balance of power and rebalancing from now on,” Saint-Martin added.
