CHART OF THE MONTH - DR. REBECCA HARDING, EQUANT ANALYTICS

Just how globalised is France?

The French election campaign has raised some important questions: first, what is France’s role in the world, and second how can that role be articulated to its citizens? It is easy to campaign on the back of a view “for” or “against” globalisation. But the reality may well be more complex: to many, globalisation is a threat and it is therefore the next President’s responsibility, to explain why France would do itself great damage by extracting itself from the global, free-trade economy.

France is the fifth largest trading nation in the world with its exports contributing over US$ 600bn in 2016 to the country’s GDP. France is also the fourth most open economy in the G20 measured as the proportion of GDP accounted for by trade at 48% compared to 43% in the UK, for example. While this is not as open as Germany, at 63%, it still shows that trade matters to the French economy and French jobs. More than this, out of France’s 12 largest trade partners, 7 are in Europe (Figure 1), although trade outside of the EU, particularly with the US, China and the UAE is growing more quickly than trade with its European partners.  France’s exports to Germany were worth US$ 80.5bn in 2016 and exports to the US worth US$ 50bn but the growth with the US suggests the gap is not necessarily permanent.

Figure 1:   Projected growth in trade between France and its top partners ordered by size left to right, 2016-2020 (CAGR, %)

Source:     Equant Analytics, 2017