European leaders are losing their patience with Biden

European leaders are losing their patience with Biden

By: Rachel Marsden

VANCOUVER — Europe followed Washington straight into a buzz saw with the Ukraine conflict. And now key leaders are finally waking up to the damage they’ve done to their own economies.

French President Emmanuel Macron was the first to suggest that behind the facade of smiles and unity, all really isn’t well between Europe and the U.S. After sanctioning its own Russian gas supply in the absence of a viable backup plan to replace it, the EU had little choice but to turn to American natural gas. But now Europe isn’t thrilled that in the absence of competition for American gas, the U.S. is now free to jack up its price. “American gas is 3-4 times cheaper on the domestic market than the price at which they offer it to Europeans. These are double standards,” Macron said recently.

Whatever happened to Biden’s promise back in March, when he was egging on the European Union in its anti-Russian sanctions frenzy for Ukraine, that he would help them replace Russian gas?

During Biden’s trip to Brussels back in March, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen celebrated the jacked-up flow of American gas to the EU. “This amount is replacing one-third already of the Russian gas going to Europe today. So we are right on track now to diversify away from Russian gas and towards our friends and partners, reliable and trustworthy suppliers,” she said. Guess she overlooked the small matter of pricing. Or else, as an unelected bureaucrat making tens of thousands of euros each month, maybe she doesn’t much care.

Fast-forward a few months, and Europeans from Paris to Prague are now spilling into the streets to protest exploding energy prices. Meanwhile, their fearless leaders are suggesting that they offset the problem by just wearing two sweaters. Apparently German industry — the backbone of European production — doesn’t figure that new maximum allowable heating and cooling laws or Europeans shortening their shower times are going to adequately fulfill its energy needs.

So as Germany faces deindustrialization due to energy shortages, the incentives to shift operations across the Atlantic where its plentiful are growing. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act not only provides tax incentives tied to products made in America, but also encourages consumers to purchase electric vehicles made in America, to the detriment of European automakers. “We need a Buy European Act like the Americans, we need to reserve [our subsidies] for our European manufacturers,” Macron has said in response.

In the wake of a meeting in Paris this week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Macron are reportedly eyeing a European response to Biden’s protectionism, according to Politico.

It would have been much easier to not have blindly followed Biden’s anti-Russian dogma knowing that the European economy is far more integrated than America’s with that of Russia. Dogmatic and ideologically-driven European elites might like the idea, on paper, of switching out Russian gas for what a U.S. official once described as “molecules of freedom”, but cheap Russian gas is what ultimately built Germany into an industrial powerhouse and has enabled Europe to compete with the U.S. Now, that global playing field is being tilted in Washington’s favor at the expense of average European citizens who get stuck with the bill for exorbitant anti-Russian virtue signaling.

The EU is operating from a position of such dire weakness that it’s now audaciously trying to dictate to the rest of the world the price at which it will purchase Russian oil, and is reportedly upset that the Biden administration insists on setting that price cap higher than the EU wants to have to pay — particularly since it has failed to also come to an agreement in also calling the shots with yet another price cap on what it would be willing to pay for gas. Well, the bloc could always just keep buying oil from Russia sent to — and laundered through — China. That way the EU can continue to publicly rail against Russian President Vladimir Putin while changing nothing except the higher price that they’re paying. The price cap idea itself is absurdly arrogant, given that the West doesn’t represent the entire rest of the world, which clearly has nothing to do with this glorified regional conflict in Ukraine and the self-harming recklessness that it has sparked in the West.

You can’t blame Washington for trying to exploit the EU’s desperation under the guise of helping it out, though. Ultimately, it’s Biden’s job to maximize any benefit to U.S. interests. He has every right to try his luck in selling out European allies to gain a competitive advantage. Europe could reverse course at any time by standing up for itself and insisting on a withdrawal to the negotiating table. The fact that hasn’t happened is proof that Europe is still not yet ready to put the needs of its own citizens first.