Germany’s Scholz: EU wants to avoid subsidy race with U.S.

The European Union wants to avoid a subsidy race against the United States and does not want to fare behind Mexico or Canada as a trading partner, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday.
Scholz was speaking alongside Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Berlin ahead of an EU summit next week that will discuss funding for green industry projects to counterbalance subsidies in the United States and China.
The EU wants to adapt its state aid rules to prevent an exodus of investment triggered by Washington’s Inflation Reduction Act, fearing it might lure away EU businesses and disadvantage European companies.
“We are all in agreement that we don’t want to enter a worldwide subsidy competition,” Scholz said. “That would be terrible, not so many could keep up – some countries maybe, but that also would not be the goal of things.”