PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron will travel to Southeast Asia to pitch France and Europe as reliable partners with “no strings attached” as the US and China use more aggressive ways to gain influence in the region, officials said.
Macron is set to arrive in Hanoi on Sunday (May 25), the first trip to Vietnam by a French president in nearly a decade, move on to Indonesia and finish up in Singapore, where he will speak at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s top defence conference.
Macron will present France and Europe as defenders of international cooperation and rules-based trade, at a time when other world powers such as the US under President Donald Trump and China use more “coercive” or “predatory” methods.
“As far as we’re concerned, we defend the idea of rules for international trade, we don’t advocate for the law of the jungle, where it’s about survival of the fittest,” a French presidential adviser said on Wednesday.
Export-reliant Vietnam was caught off guard by the threat of high tariffs from the US, while France is keen to diversify its supply sources and markets to rely less on China. Dozens of deals were being prepared and could be signed during the three state visits, the Elysee told Reuters earlier.
