French President Emmanuel Macron took an unusually anti-American stance in a new interview, stressing the need for Europe to act on its own accord and avoid getting entangled with American priorities over issues like China and Taiwan. This is timely, considering our coverage of an underreported story last week: “Chinese and French energy companies settled an energy trade in yuan for the first time in history.”

Macron said as much in the interview, publicly stating that the French and Europe, in general, should not be dependent on the “extraterritoriality of the U.S. dollar.” Macron sees a world in which a unified Europe, presumably with the French at the helm, can act in the increasingly multi-polar world order.