I'm John Bachelors, Joseph Sternberg, my colleague. He's a member of the editorial board of

the Wall Street Journalist, political economics. He's based in London, but he observes the European

plane. And there's a puzzle in the European plane. Oh, there are many puzzles. But one that's

a lot of fun is Emmanuel Macron. The twice-elected, extremely popular, very smooth president of

France. In a visit to China, he's made remarks that he then sought to cancel by ordering

websites to take down the quotes that he'd given them. He, there to for on his plane back

from China. It, at the same time, Emmanuel Macron spoke of autonomous Europe. He spoke

of business ahead that isn't necessarily confrontational with China. He spoke of Taiwan

is not our fight. Other things like this. But my, I'm keen on Joe's measure of all of Europe

watching Emmanuel Macron. You see an outlier, Joe? Everybody else goes, oh, well, that's

just France. And we don't have to worry about what they're up to.

It's, it's been fascinating to watch because especially on the China issues, you do kind

of get the impression that he is an outlier. I mean, what is not an outlier is this notion

that French leaders have always pushed of a desire for strategic autonomy from the US.

I think that's a very long-running theme in Europe. Probably something that a bunch of European

countries and their governments would agree with in one form or another. But what was fascinating

about the China comments in particular and also how he seemed to view strategic autonomy

in that sense with reference to the US and not with China, which is definitely at odds

with the way the conversation has been going in other places. So whereas Germany is now

a year into a big debate about their relationship with China and the thrust of it is to become

less dependent on China and move more back into what you could describe as a Western orbit.

There was a manual macro and France going off to China with a very conciliatory approach

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