Do you remember the most Homeric of world trade negotiations, called the Uruguay round, which took place between 1986 and 1994? I was a teenager then and I remember that round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt) vividly.

I had taken to reading the austere Le Monde every day and remember the uncouth Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association in Hollywood, who particularly despised European film directors for pleading with their governments to exclude cinema, and the arts in general, from the negotiations. Valenti roared back: "Culture is like chewing-gum, a product like any other." At the time, France's President François Mitterrand led the rebellion and, sphinx-like, treated the like of Valenti with hauteur. He retorted: "The mind's creations are no mere commodities and can't be treated as such."

The contrast sums up the opposing views: the US considers cinema and the arts as entertainment industries making profits; Europe considers culture as the product of ideas that go beyond a strict commercial value. In the late 80s, France coined the notion of "cultural exception" which has since morphed into the less arrogant-sounding "cultural diversity", a principle adopted in October 2005 by Unesco as a legally binding convention passed by 185 states against two. The naysayers were the US and Israel.

Twenty years later, we're back at it with the opening of talks for a new transatlantic trade agreement. The problem is, this time Europe is in a weaker state. France may have warned this week (paywalled link) that it will not start negotiation if cultural industries are not excluded from trade talks, making its point with a letter signed by 16 European culture ministers, but will it prevail once again? Nothing is less sure. To make the situation even trickier than in 1993, it seems that the EU commission supremo, José Manuel Barroso, is playing a double game. Eager to please Washington – he is said to want to succeed Ban Ki-moon at the UN, he is telling the Europeans to, as we say in French, put water in their wine, ie pacify the Americans. However, Barroso risks appearing incoherent, saying last month, "we should not exclude the audio-visual sector in negotiations with the US," before adding, "at the same time, we must make it clear that the cultural exception is not negotiable." Go figure.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama and his administration are flexing their muscles, saying: "To accomplish an ambitious and comprehensive agreement, we should not be carving out issues before the negotiation even begins." As often before in those testosterone-filled trade negotiations, these are often just words, ways of acting tough. But not only.

The notion of cultural diversity for Europe is a crucial one. It is not, as marketers would have it, a rear-guard reaction from an old continent – it is the fight for a rich intellectual and artistic debate in which profit-making should not be the only consideration. France's system of subsidies for the arts and quotas for European films on its screens has for decades allowed a large public to discover and embrace different points of view. In France, American films have "only" a 50-60% market share, compared with 90% in the UK. Why would we want to see more American films, simply because they have the financial power to impose themselves in our multiplexes, when there are gems to be discovered coming from other countries, albeit financially fragile and which need help to get to us?

Cinema is not the only thorn. Should we just wait while Amazon gives the kiss of death to independent bookshops in Europe through dumping practices (while failing to pay taxes), or should we support those independent booksellers who fulfil an important role in society? The French government has pledged, since March, €18m to the book industry. Is this ugly protectionism or a measure of public sanity?

During a week when China raised taxes on European wine as retaliation against Europe's resistance on the issue of cheap solar panels coming from China, I'd say, let wine fend for itself and let us defend cultural diversity.