Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to Washington this week and the upcoming meeting of the US-EU Trade and Technology Council on Monday are important tests of whether the western world can avoid a return of destructive beggar-thy-neighbour policies which already once destroyed the global trading system in the 1930s.

The most recent point of contention centres on the American Inflation Reduction Act’s provisions aimed at supporting US manufacturers of electric vehicles, to the exclusion of European ones.