Before French President Emmanuel Macron delivered an address at a joint meeting of United States Congress on Wednesday, the headlines about his trip to Washington centred on his apparent “bromance” with US President Donald Trump. On Tuesday, the duo engaged in a series of physical embraces and celebrated both their personal rapport as well as the “unbreakable” bonds between France and the US.
But on Wednesday, as his three-day visit drew to a close, Macron shifted the story dramatically. In his speech to American lawmakers, he offered a comprehensive rejection of the main tenets of Trumpism, excoriating “extreme nationalism” and protectionism, championing climate-change science and defending the international liberal order. “You can play with anger and fear for a time,” Macron said, alluding to the themes that fuel right-wing nationalist movements in the West, “but they do not construct anything.”
Macron went on, urging his American audience to look beyond borders and walls. “We can choose isolationism. But closing the door to the world will not stop the evolution of the world,” he said. And he bristled at the rise of autocrats and illiberal democrats, which include some leaders favoured by Trump: “I don’t share fascination for new strong powers and the illusion of nationalism,” he said.
Macron tweeted: “Together, we shall prevail. Long live the friendship between the United States of America and France!” Macron also cast a sceptical eye at Trump’s efforts to slap tariffs on imports from allies and undermine existing free-trade deals. To Macron, this bid to boost American manufacturing jobs at home — combined with Trump’s dismissals of climate change as a “hoax” — was counterproductive and shortsighted.
“Some people think that securing current industries and their jobs is more urgent than transforming our economies to meet the challenge of global change,” he said. In the final analysis, he suggested, the impasse cannot last. “In the long run, we will have to face the same realities,” he said. “We’re just citizens of the same planet.”
There’s no “Planet B”, Macron pointed out, echoing an earlier argument he made about there being no “Plan B” for the Iran nuclear deal that Trump wants to dismantle. Then he drew thunderous applause from Democrats with this confident declaration: “I am sure one day the United States will come back and join the Paris agreement.”
Macron tweeted: “On the same day, April 25th, in 1960, Gnral de Gaulle conveyed the same message of respect and friendship to the US. Congress.”
Of course, Macron also played the role of the proud transatlantic ally. He hailed the historic French-American friendship and the two countries’ shared sacrifices from the Second World War to the current fight against militant groups in various parts of the world. And he predictably appealed to a love of liberty and the many other cultural connections between the two countries.
Macron also summoned legacies largely ignored by Trump. He used his moment in Congress to celebrate the work of James Baldwin, Richard Wright and other icons of the civil rights struggle in America. Not long thereafter, he toured the Martin Luther King Jr memorial in Washington with Representative John Lewis (Democrat, from Georgia, a civil rights hero who had branded Trump a “racist” earlier this year.
While Macron launched pointed barbs at the Trump administration, he sought to flatter American egos. There are few things Washington officialdom loves to discuss more than the importance of American leadership in the world. Macron did not disappoint. He reminded Democrats and Republicans that the nuclear deal with Iran that US Congress approved in 2015 was worth defending, and that the alternatives — a confrontation that may lead to war with Iran — would “replicate past mistakes”.
He also told his audience of the importance of the world order that “you built”, pointing to the institutions and international norms developed after the Second World War. “The United States is the one who invented this multilateralism,” Macron said, invoking a term explicitly decried by Trump officials.
“The most likely result is that the American president won’t pay attention to what Macron was trying to say — indeed, that he won’t even understand that he has been so openly challenged,” wrote Post columnist Anne Applebaum. “And that may have been the point, for Macron’s speech will be perfectly understood in France, in Europe, and even in the United States (at least outside the White House).”
Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, an inveterate Atlanticist, echoed the sentiments of many in her milieu with a tweeted jab at Trump: “It has been too long since a President delivered a speech in Washington about the need to defend democracy and support international cooperation.”
— Washington Post
Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs.