The Last President of Europe by William Drozdiak

Author:William Drozdiak [DROZDIAK, WILLIAM]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2020-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

THE WORLD

CHAPTER 7

DEALING WITH THE DONALD

As Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, arrived at the South Lawn entrance to the White House for the first official state visit of the Trump presidency in April 2018, the French leader was prepared for the worst. He had been warned by his ambassador in Washington, Gérard Araud, that Donald Trump would be in no mood to indulge him despite their vaunted “bromance.” The lavish welcome was impressive, replete with military bands, color guards, a fife-and-drum corps, and a twenty-one-gun salute. As he climbed out of his limousine, Macron embraced Trump and bestowed kisses on both his cheeks. It was the same way, he later recalled, that Benjamin Franklin and the French philosopher Voltaire greeted each other in 1778. Inside the Oval Office, Trump raved to reporters about how much he liked Macron, who is more than thirty years his junior. As he flicked what he thought was dandruff from the French president’s shoulder, Trump declared: “We have to make him perfect. He is perfect.”1

As the two presidents launched into a forty-five-minute private conversation, followed by a larger meeting with key cabinet officials, Macron turned over in his mind the elaborate arguments he had crafted in English for the contentious issues on their agenda. Ever since their first encounter just two weeks after he took office, Macron had been determined to get along with Trump despite their radically different personalities. As an ultra-pragmatist, Macron said, he realized that it was necessary to establish a trusting partnership with Trump because, almost by default, he had become Europe’s chief interlocutor. During my conversations with him, Macron was careful to avoid criticism of Trump’s outlandish behavior, saying that he was obligated to work with the elected representative of France’s oldest ally. He had quickly grasped Trump’s erratic and transactional nature, as well as his affection for strong authoritarian figures. At their May 2017 meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Macron, eager to make a vivid first impression, engaged in a lengthy, white-knuckle handshake with Trump, hoping to send the message that the American president should not mistake his youth and inexperience for weakness: he would be tough and unyielding in defending French and European interests.

Macron had traveled to Washington with an ambitious wish list. He wanted to persuade Trump to abide by the Iranian nuclear deal, maintain the presence of American Special Forces in Syria, and defuse a transatlantic trade war by getting Europe a permanent exemption from steel and aluminum tariffs. Macron thought that he might be able to achieve significant progress on the trade issue. He told Trump that the United States and Europe shared similar problems with a common nemesis, namely China. The most effective approach, he reasoned, would be for the United States and Europe to collaborate on a joint strategy that would persuade China to curtail the subsidies for its steel industry that had so distorted the world market. Macron claimed that the United States and Europe represented nearly half of

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