To reduce the French trade deficit, we must start producing in France certain goods now imported, pleads the High Commission for Planning (HCP) in a note published Tuesday, which lists 50 products for which it wants to initiate a reflection with the sectors concerned.
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"On average, our country's foreign trade has shown a deficit of some 75 billion euros over the last few years, while German foreign trade has a surplus of more than 200 billion euros,"
notes the High Commissioner for the Plan François Bayrou at the beginning of this report. An
"unacceptable"
situation
,
according to him, which testifies to the
French industrial
"downgrading"
, despite national successes in
"technologically demanding productions"
, such as satellites, planes or chemicals.
The well-known observation is clear:
"France is in a deficit situation vis-à-vis most of its European partners"
, underlines the note, which points out that if our exports have increased by more than 54% between 2001 and 2019, they increased by 76% in Italy, 108% in Germany and 133% in Spain.
With the even stronger increase in French imports, France's export market shares at world level "have fallen by half", going from 6.3% in 1990 to 3% in 2019.
"Reconquest of the productive apparatus"
To remedy this, the HCP lists the more than 900 items or products that record a trade deficit greater than 50 million euros. They represent around 80% of France's total trade deficit, which reached 266 billion euros in 2019. The report thus regrets that France is the world leader in potato cultivation, but massively imports chips and others. flakes. Likewise with wood and its by-products, such as furniture.
"After an in-depth examination of our comparative advantages in this area, these products in deficit could correspond to the potential fields of a strategy of reconquering the productive apparatus"
, proposes the HCP. Among these products, the HCP lists about fifty in eight fields: food, transport, household items, machines and tools, materials, textiles, medical and pharmaceutical products, and hydrocarbons.
He wishes to initiate work with the sectors concerned
"on the way in which national productions could be strengthened or constituted"
.
Robotization
"makes it possible to bring production costs closer between the different regions of the world"
, while the
"climate challenge"
and
"the economic and social crisis"
caused by deindustrialisation make a reindustrialization policy necessary, argues François Bayrou.
