Latest news with #François Bayrou
New York Times
a day ago
- Automotive
- New York Times
Europe Made Major Trade Concessions to Trump. How Did It Happen?
European Union officials found themselves on the defensive this week, after agreeing to a blueprint for an unfavorable trade deal with President Trump that will hit most European exports with 15 percent tariffs, while dropping levies on American cars and some farm goods to zero. François Bayrou, France's prime minister, said on social media that it was a 'dark day' for Europe. Another French minister called the agreement 'unbalanced.' A left-leaning European Parliamentarian from Belgium posted a dismayed, 'What happened, Europe?' E.U. officials offered a simple response. The situation could have become a disaster, setting off an all-out trade war. Still, the agreement is worse for Europe than just about anyone in the bloc's upper echelons would have predicted just a few weeks ago, and even that required a combination of concessions, salesmanship and flattery. It might nevertheless be one of the better results Europe could have obtained, said Aslak Berg, a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform in London. 'A lot of the initial reaction is that this a political defeat, this is a humiliation for the European Union,' Mr. Berg said. He added: 'Is it what the E.U. wanted? No. Is it ideal? No. But if this agreement sticks — big if — it will provide a certain degree of predictability.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
2 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
France Rebukes E.U.'s Trade Deal With Trump
A day after the European Union and United States struck a trade deal on Sunday, the French government has come out swinging against the agreement, calling instead for tariff retaliation and warning that Europe would be politically weakened if it didn't hit back. 'It is a dark day when an alliance of free peoples, gathered to affirm their values and defend their interests, resolves to submit,' Prime Minister François Bayrou wrote on X about the deal, which imposes 15 percent tariffs on European imports to the United States, but lowers barriers in European countries for American imports. France had been leading a charge in Europe to retaliate against the United States ahead of the deal, after an earlier threat by Mr. Trump to impose a punishing 30 percent tariff on the Europeans. Mr. Trump's on-again, off-again tariff threats had galvanized President Emmanuel Macron in particular, who said the European Union had no choice but to present a show of force. Mr. Macron has yet to comment on the trade deal, but the sharpened attacks by a phalanx of his closest cabinet members were in line with his increasingly confrontational position toward Mr. Trump on key trans-Atlantic issues. Last week, Mr. Macron said his government would recognize a Palestinian state, setting France apart from the United States and most of its close allies, and risking friction with Mr. Trump. With the outlines of a trade deal now clearer, Mr. Macron's government has doubled down. Benjamin Haddad, France's minister in charge of European affairs, suggested that Mr. Trump's trade deal amounted to a predatory tactic and called for Europe to activate an anti-coercion instrument to tax U.S. digital services, or to exclude American tech companies from public contracts in Europe. 'The free trade that has brought shared prosperity to both sides of the Atlantic since the end of the Second World War is now being rejected by the United States, which has opted for economic coercion and complete disregard for W.T.O. rules,' Mr. Haddad wrote on Monday. 'We must quickly draw the necessary conclusions or risk being wiped out.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
First Thing: US-EU trade deal is a ‘dark day' for Europe, says French PM
Good morning. The US-EU trade deal, clinched in a ballroom at Donald Trump's golf resort in Scotland on Sunday, has been criticised by France's prime minister and business leaders across Germany. The deal, which will impose 15% tariffs on almost all European exports to the US including cars, ends the threat of punitive 30% import duties being imposed on Trump's 1 August deadline for a deal, but it is a world apart from the zero-zero import and export tariff the EU offered initially. It also means European exporters to the US will face more than triple the average 4.8% tariff now in force, with negotiations to continue on steel, which is still facing a 50% tariff, aviation, and a question mark over future barriers to pharmaceutical exports. What did the French prime minister say? France's prime minister, François Bayrou, said Europe had submitted to the US, on a 'dark day' for the union. 'It is a dark day when an alliance of free peoples, gathered to affirm their values and defend their interests, resolves to submission,' Bayrou posted on X. Palestinians in Gaza have reacted with wariness after Israel began a limited, daily pause in fighting in three populated areas of Gaza to allow what Benjamin Netanyahu described as a 'minimal' amount of aid into the territory. Scores of Palestinians have died of starvation in recent weeks in a crisis attributed by humanitarian organisations and the UN to Israel's blockade of almost all aid into the territory. The World Food Programme (WFP) said 90,000 women and children were in urgent need of treatment for malnutrition and that one in three people were going without food for days. The Israeli military said it had begun a 'tactical pause' in the densely populated areas of Gaza City, Deir al-Balah and Muwasi and that the pause would be repeated every day from 10am to 8pm local time until further notice. How will Israel's 'humanitarian pauses' affect Gaza's starvation crisis? Israel has announced airdropped aid will resume and that humanitarian corridors would be established to facilitate the entry of UN aid trucks into Gaza. NGOs say these steps may ease aid access, but with mass starvation already under way, far more is needed. In particular, humanitarian groups have called for a full ceasefire in order to get civilians the help they need. The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, said yesterday he would have 'great pause' about granting a pardon or commutation to Ghislaine Maxwell while another House Republican said it should be considered as part of an effort to obtain more information about Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. The splits over what to do with Maxwell illustrate the complicated challenge posed by the scandal for Trump, his Maga base and the broader Republican party. Donald Trump and his allies, including Johnson, have been under immense pressure to disclose more information about Epstein for weeks. Johnson weighed in on the possibility of a pardon after Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, met with Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking, over two days last week. What did Johnson say about the potential pardon? 'If you're asking my opinion, I think 20 years was a pittance. I think she should have a life sentence at least. I mean, think of all these unspeakable crimes,' he told NBC's Meet the Press yesterday. A top US medical body has expressed 'deep concern' to Robert F Kennedy Jr over news reports that the health secretary plans to overhaul a panel that determines which preventive health measures including cancer screenings should be covered by insurance companies. The daughter of a woman murdered by a man from Laos who is among those controversially deported from the US to South Sudan has decried the lack of rights afforded to those who were expelled to countries other than their own. Several passersby helped apprehend a suspect who stabbed 11 people at a Walmart in Michigan, with video footage showing several citizens confronting him. Americans are getting married, having kids, buying a home, and retiring years later than what once was the norm – and many don't ever reach these milestones. The Guardian heard from hundreds of readers who shared their stories about how the current economic and political climate has put some of their biggest life decisions on hold. Donald Trump's obsession with dealmaking isn't about securing success so much as performing it, writes Arjun Appadurai. By treating every deal as a branding exercise – successful or not – Trump has found a way to amass wealth, skirt accountability and outmaneuver traditional markets. His defining trait? Avarice, not ambition. An Iowa toddler who was born when his mother was less than five months pregnant has been recognized as the world's most premature baby by Guinness World Records. When he was born Nash, who recently turned one, weighed only 10 ounces (283 grams). First Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you're not already signed up, subscribe now. If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@
The Guardian
21-07-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Two days less holiday? France is up in arms but my sympathy is limited
France is skint, but the French are in denial. To judge by the howls of outrage from the left and the hard right of the French political spectrum, you would think the prime minister, François Bayrou, had just taken a Javier Milei-style chainsaw to public services, announced Doge-style mass layoffs or imposed swingeing pay cuts. But it was Bayrou's suggestion that the French should give up two of their 11 cherished public holidays – Easter Monday and 8 May, the anniversary of the end of the second world war in Europe – and work instead to increase economic output and hence government revenue that provoked the anger. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, accused the centrist prime minister of leading a 'race towards an economic, financial and social abyss for the greater suffering of all'. The Socialist party leader, Olivier Faure, described the proposals as 'a demolition plan for our French model', and Jordan Bardella, president of the hard-right National Rally (RN), said the the proposal to cancel the two holidays was 'a direct attack on our history'. The hard left and the populist right threatened to bring down the government with no confidence motions in the autumn, when the budget will be put to a hung parliament, as they did with Bayrou's short-lived predecessor, Michel Barnier, last year. As is so often the case, the sound and fury in the echo chamber of French political rhetoric is out of all proportion to reality. Bayrou proposes a standstill in public sector pay, pensions, welfare benefits and tax thresholds in 2026, which, with inflation forecast to increase slightly to about 1.4% next year, means a modest erosion of living standards for most people and a slightly increased tax take. Better-off pensioners will pay more tax, poorer ones will pay less. The measures are supposed to reduce the deficit by €43.8bn to 4.6% of economic output next year. Only defence spending will be increased, in line with France's commitment to Nato, given Europe's deteriorating security situation. This is hardly a draconian austerity purge for a country that had a deficit of 5.8% of GDP last year – the highest in the euro area – and which by most rational measurements is living beyond its means. National debt has risen to 113% of GDP, higher than any EU country except Greece and Italy. But while their debt piles are falling, France's keeps on growing. Public spending accounts for 56.5% of GDP in France, the second highest level in the EU after Finland. Despite the centrist president Emmanuel Macron's intention to reduce the tax burden and get more French people into work when he took office in 2017, a series of crises – the revolt of the gilets jaunes against a carbon tax, the Covid-19 pandemic and the effects of Russia's war in Ukraine – triggered more state expenditure. In 2023, France's tax-to-GDP ratio was 43.8%, significantly higher than the average of 33.9% in advanced economies. The country has too many layers of public administration, which together employ 5.8 million people – 20% of the total workforce. Bayrou proposed that one in three retiring civil servants should not be replaced, drawing immediate protests from trade unions representing teachers, health workers and the police. Perhaps the most telling criticism came from Édouard Philippe, Macron's first prime minister and a likely centrist presidential candidate, who said Bayrou's package contained no structural reforms of failing public policies and was just an emergency plan to limit the damage without solving the problem. Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion Axing a couple of public holidays would go some way towards narrowing the gap between the number of hours worked per inhabitant in France compared with competitors such as Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK – not to mention the United States or South Korea. But the French are militantly resistant to any attempt to remove acquired social rights, regardless of the economic situation, changing demography or dire public finances, as they showed with sustained social unrest over Macron's raising of the retirement age to 64. It's not that French workers actually work much less than their European counterparts. But France has less of its population in employment because of a combination of earlier retirement, later entry into the labour market, higher unemployment and welfare dependency. 'The markets and the EU are watching us,' Pierre Moscovici, the president of the French court of accounts and a former finance minister and European commissioner, said after presenting an annual report that warned that the country's debt was approaching a tipping point. 'As demanding and difficult as it may be, getting our public finances under control from 2026 is imperative for debt sustainability,' he added. France has long enjoyed the indulgence of bond market vigilantes because of its ability to raise revenue and a presumption that its debt was implicitly backed by Germany, since a French financial crisis would trigger severe turbulence in the eurozone. But several credit ratings agencies have recently lowered France's sovereign rating because of a concern that the government will be unable to enact serious deficit-cutting measures without a parliamentary majority. French people need to get real about their fiscal predicament before it descends into an acute crisis. So far there is little sign of that reality dawning on either the political class or the population. The left just keeps repeating that the government should soak the rich and reimpose a wealth tax, even though that would make little more than a symbolic dent in the deficit. The populist right argues that the state could save all the money it needs if only it stopped paying benefits to immigrants. Those numbers don't add up either. With so many politicians encouraging voters to go on believing that 'public money' grows on trees or can be borrowed in unlimited amounts – Mélenchon has argued in the past that France should default on its debt – it is hard to have a rational debate on the budget. The stage is set for another battle of wills in parliament, and probably in the street. If the uneasy grouping of centrist and conservative parties supporting Bayrou cannot get something resembling his proposed savings through the National Assembly this autumn, France may be plunged into a real financial crisis that could play into the hands of Marine Le Pen's National Rally ahead of the next presidential election, due in 2027. Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre
Bloomberg
18-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Bayrou's Crisis Budget Plan Lacks a Crisis to Get Public Onboard
Bonjour et bienvenue to the Paris Edition. I'm Paris Bureau Chief Alan Katz. If you haven't yet, subscribe now to the Paris Edition newsletter. Prime Minister François Bayrou said during his budget presentatio n this week that this was France's last chance to rein in government spending and attack its yawning deficit before hurtling over the proverbial cliff.
