The miracle obviously did not happen... France's trade deficit plunged further, to reach 84.7 billion euros in 2021 (i.e. 3.4% of GDP), after 64.7 billion the previous year, Customs announced on Tuesday morning.
Once again, our imports have increased more (by 19% compared to 2020) than our exports (17%), the energy bill having weighed heavily.
In the red for nearly 20 years, the French trade balance deficit today makes our country the worst student in Europe.
The German trade surplus, in particular, has been hovering around 200 billion for years.
But Italy or Spain are also doing better than us.
Small consolation for France on this day of disappointing results,
“A positive dynamic is at work,
wants to see the Minister of Foreign Trade, Franck Riester.
In the majority of sectors, excluding automotive and aeronautics, we have managed to erase the crisis by exceeding the export performance of 2019”.
Nevertheless... At the beginning of the year, the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, let go during his wishes to the press that
"the weakness of our foreign trade is the reflection of the weakness of our internal economy »
.
The poor performance of foreign trade is the consequence of a bad organization of our export apparatus, and the creation of successive "one-stop shops" by each government has not really changed the situation - we count 136,000 companies which sell their products outside our borders, when this figure rises to 220,000 in Italy and 300,000 in Germany.
But it is above all due to the progressive deindustrialization of the country, which has gone from a production model to a consumption model.
The weight of industry in GDP, which reached 23% in 1980, is now 13.5%, a level well below the European average (19.7%).
Studies show that French companies have outsourced more than their European neighbours.
Market share losses
The country's lack of competitiveness has done its work.
While from the beginning of the 2000s, Germany embarked on large-scale reforms on the front of the market and the cost of labor - which will subsequently be considered a real success by many economists -, the France took the opposite path, installing in particular the 35 hours.
Products that are too expensive due to excessive labor costs, too high taxation, curbing the investment potential of French companies whose products were not sufficiently high-end... Year after year, the France is losing ground.
Its export market shares of goods and services in Europe have fallen steadily, from 17.9% in 2000 to 14.4% in 2017.
They then stabilized during the 2017-2019 period, in particular thanks to the reductions in charges from the CICE and the liability pact decided by François Hollande.
But, since 2020, it has seen its positions recede again.
France's share in the euro zone's goods and services exports is currently around 13.5%, its lowest level in twenty years.
Globally, it is around 3%.
According to the latest annual report from the Directorate General of the Treasury, published in early February 2021, France was the world's sixth largest exporter of goods and services - it was fifth in 2018 -, behind China, the United States, Germany, the Japan and the UK.
It remains the export champion for aeronautics and tourism, but depends on imports for energy, capital goods and manufactured products.
A few weeks ago, because the industrial reconquest is now a priority, a note from the planning commission meticulously looked at the 914 products which show a trade deficit of more than 50 million euros, for a total of 217 billion euros.
And she deduced that a
“reconquest of national production”
should have been launched
“for at least two decades”
.
It takes
"an overall reflection, for each production, from start to finish, integrating all the links in the chain"
, insisted the services of François Bayrou, citing the sectors of food, transport, household objects, machines and tools, materials, textiles, medical and pharmaceutical products, and hydrocarbons.
The executive has set itself a 10-year horizon to bring the French trade balance back into balance.