Biden, EU leader talk Ukraine, trade spat
WASHINGTON >> President Joe Biden and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, opened negotiations on Friday over the critical minerals used in electric vehicles amid concerns of a potential trade war triggered by the Biden administration's signature clean energy legislation.
The recent tensions with European allies center on provisions in the legislation that offer tax credits to American consumers to buy new and used electric vehicles. The law restricts the credit to vehicles built in North America and has strict requirements around the source of critical minerals used to make their batteries, pitting Biden's efforts to bolster domestic manufacturing against concerns over trade protectionism.
The limited new trade deal under discussion would help European companies qualify for more tax credits being offered in the United States.
In the longer term, officials said, the deal would provide a framework for creating a club of countries that could mine, process and trade critical minerals, in an effort to wean the electric vehicle industry off its current heavy reliance on China as a source of those minerals.
“The goal is to have an agreement on critical raw materials that have been sourced or processed in the European Union, that these strategic supply chains are able to access the American market as if they've been sourced in the United States,” von der Leyen told reporters after her meeting at the White House. “So also access to all the necessary benefits from the United States.”
In a separate initiative, the governments said they would begin coordinating more closely in distributing generous new subsidies to the clean energy industry. That coordination would aim to avoid a situation in which companies might try to start bidding wars between the United States and Europe over where to build new plants.
Biden and von der Leyen also aimed to portray a unified front in confronting Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
Both leaders committed to limiting the impact of the energy crisis in Europe as the European Union reduces its reliance on Russian oil and gas, and to aggressively enforce sanctions that have been imposed on Moscow.