France has warned that the EU should not rush into trade talks with US president Donald Trump, as Paris seeks guarantees that sensitive economic sectors will be protected in negotiations that it hopes can be delayed until after May’s European Parliament polls.
Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, the French junior minister responsible for commerce, told the Financial Times that Paris broadly supported EU plans to hammer out a tariff reduction deal with the US on industrial goods. But he signalled that France was seeking to narrow the scope of the talks and was resisting attempts by other governments to get negotiations under way quickly.
“We have concerns linked to the timing for the adoption of the [EU’s negotiating] mandate,” he said. “Because it seems that the EU has already made enough gestures of goodwill so that we might have some proof of good faith from the side of our American friends.”