EPERNAY, France — As Donald Trump launches a full-scale trade war, France wants to replace the United States with other trade partners. Does that mean Paris is ready to accept a massive trade deal between the European Union and South America it has excoriated for years?
French Trade Minister Laurent Saint-Martin told POLITICO on Friday that he hopes the 20 percent tariffs Washington slapped on all EU goods Wednesday would motivate the European Union to seek trade deals with other countries.
“This is a wake-up call on trade agreements,” the minister said.
“Diversifying our trade outlets must be a priority if we want to make Europe not only a power ready for a showdown with the United States, but also a power open to other regions of the world. Mercosur is one of them, but the agreement just has to be acceptable. As it stands, it still isn’t.”
Saint-Martin said he hoped that the European Commission would quickly make tweaks France has long been asking for in the pact struck between the EU and Mercosur — a South American trade bloc that groups Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
“The Mercosur deal is a good agreement if, and only if, we manage to have mirror clauses,” Saint-Martin added, referring to France’s long standing push for imported agricultural goods to meet the same production standards imposed on EU farmers.
France has been the fiercest opponent of the EU-Mercosur deal, which was sealed last year but still needs approval from EU countries before it enters into force. Saint-Martin said it was not too late for the Commission to change the deal to make it more acceptable.
“We have a few months ahead of us, until about the end of the summer, to do this work with the Commission, and I hope it will be fruitful,” he said.
That would mean reopening negotiations on the deal just as the two sides reached their historic agreement after more than two decades of negotiations. The text is currently going through translation and legal scrubbing before being subject to a vote by EU countries.
Saint-Martin spoke on a visit to Epernay, home to some of France’s most iconic champagne houses, to meet producers worried about Trump’s threat to hit European wine, champagne and spirits with massive 200 percent duties.
During the trip he visited the underground cellars and the bottling machines of Winston Churchill’s favorite champagne maker, Pol Roger.
France is looking for allies to urge the Commission to change the text of the Mercosur deal and on Thursday organized a meeting of ministers from Poland, Italy, Austria, Romania and Belgium to discuss it.
During the meeting, French Europe Minister Benjamin Haddad proposed to ask the Commission to modify the deal and add an automatic safeguard clause on “the most sensitive agricultural products,” according to a French diplomat who was granted anonymity to conform with French professional norms.