Kamala Harris is in Paris making the case that Trump’s ‘America First’ era has ended
PARIS — When President Donald Trump traveled to France for a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, he walked alone, shunning European leaders who marched in unity along the Champselysees. He then left town ahead of a peace conference intended to highlight cooperation among democracies.
Three years later, Vice President Kamala Harris, the highest-ranking American to visit France since Trump left office, is trying to make the case the United States is a team player.
She began a five-day trip here by declaring “the best kind of work” happens with “scientists from around the world coming together.” Her tour of the Institut Pasteur science lab Tuesday, where Americans are working alongside Europeans to tackle COVID-19 and where her Indian-born mother researched breast cancer, was one of several events aimed at drawing a contrast with Trump’s “America First” agenda.
On Wednesday, she met with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace for nearly two hours. Both leaders told reporters that they agreed it was the “beginning of a new era” that required working together.
“When the United States and France have worked together on challenges and opportunities we have always found great success because of shared values and shared priorities,” Harris told Macron in front of reporters.
Harris’ efforts to rebrand America as a collaborator come amid a major rift between the Biden administration and the French government over an arms deal that has yet to fully heal and amid
continuing questions about whether America can really be counted on in the long run, despite the administration’s “America is back” motto.
Nicholas Dungan, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank who focuses on France, said Europeans are eager to have America back.
“The problem,” Dungan added, “is what does it mean?”
Dungan said Europeans’ concerns about U.S. leadership extend more deeply than how Trump handled foreign policy. European allies believe Trump was likely just a brash iteration of longer-term changes in American attitudes about engaging in the world.
Among the indications that the U.S. is struggling to regain its leadership role, Dungan said, were its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and its uneven attempts to address climate change. The U.S. government’s increasingly aggressive posture with China — a continuation of the Trump administration’s tough line — has also caused angst in European capitals.
“The idea that Trump was a once-in-a-century or oncein-a-lifetime aberration is not something that people believe,” said Dungan, who resides in the Hague.