France and Germany’s economy ministers will ask the US to lay off making “aggressive” overtures to European companies in a bid to lure their green investments across the Atlantic, French officials said ahead of a visit to Washington this week.
France’s Bruno Le Maire and Germany’s Robert Habeck are due to hold talks with White House officials on Tuesday to underscore EU concerns about President Joe Biden’s landmark climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, and push for better co-operation.
The $370bn US package, which contains hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for green tech, aims to bolster investment in everything from electric carmakers to renewable energy producers. The bill, originally intended to challenge China’s dominance of green tech, is conditioned on manufacturing being local, which has sparked fears that a growing number of businesses considering investments in Europe would pivot to the US instead.