The best, but there is still work. The French trade deficit on goods was reduced to 81 billion euros in 2024, thanks to a greater decrease in imports than exports and a decline in energy imports, according to customs. A deficit that remains high, at a time when the risks of trade war could worsen the situation. In 2023, France had recorded a deficit of 99.6 billion euros in the wake of a record deficit of 164 billion euros in 2022 in a context of war in Ukraine and flight of the energy bill.
Overall, France has benefited from a greater decrease in imports than exports and a decline in energy imports, customs detailed in an annual report published on Friday. With the United States, France displays a deficit commercial balance although improvement, at 4.1 billion euros, unlike Germany which has just released a record surplus, enough to revive tensions with Donald Trump. “In an inexpensive international context, our trade balance improves,” said the Minister for Foreign Trade Laurent Saint-Martin in a declaration, stressing “internationally recognized French excellence and know-how”.
The comparison with the previous two years is necessarily flattering, after the record deficit of 164 billion euros recorded in 2022 against the backdrop of war in Ukraine and flight of the energy bill, followed by 99.6 billion euros in 2023 When energy prices were still high. “But it is worse than what we recorded in 2019”, before the pandemic, notes Stéphane Colliac, economist at BNP Paribas, interviewed by AFP. The trade deficit was then 59 billion euros, close to its average level since 2010.
“Dare export”
Like 2023, the trade balance benefited in 2024 from a decline in energy imports in the wake of the drop in hydrocarbon prices. The drop in the energy bill reached 13.3 billion euros. Perfumes, cosmetics, chemicals and electricity displayed record surpluses, and aeronautics has an excess balance, although less wide in 2023. The balance of the pharmaceutical sector displays the highest progression.
In its entirety, however, the improvement of the trade balance is explained above all by a more marked decline in imports than exports, and not by an increase in exports, which puts the embellished into perspective. “We are in a retraction of exchanges”, summarizes for AFP Olivier Redoules, director of studies of the Rexecode Institute, a situation justified by the government by global geopolitical and economic fears.
To give a taste for export and energize the trade balance, France adopted in 2023 the plan “Dare export” which provides for aid to companies wishing for internationalization (strengthening of the image of French products abroad abroad , support on fairs, facilitation of access to funding, etc.). This plan aims to reach 200,000 exporting companies by 2030. According to government figures, the number of French companies opened internationally was 151,000 in the third quarter of 2024, or 5,600 more over the last twelve months .
France also relies on the articulation of all export players: the Treasury, Business France which assists companies abroad, and Bpifrance within the “Team France Export”. However, concern dominates before an already fragile French economy and a tense geopolitical context, with the threat of new agitated on Sunday by Donald Trump to impose customs taxes against the European Union. “The risk is that exports that cannot go to the United States flood our market”, in particular Chinese exports, analyzes Olivier Redoules, which would increase imports in France.