The French government is picking up the pace in response to the trade war. Ahead of a public finance conference at the prime minister's office, scheduled for April 15, Economy Minister Eric Lombard announced in a televised interview on TF1 on Wednesday, April 9, that France's 2025 growth forecast had been revised downward, just hours after the new tariffs took effect and Donald Trump's latest about-face on the issue. "Taking the uncertainties into account," the forecast has been lowered from 0.9%, the figure from the 2025 budget presentation, to 0.7%. This scenario lines up with the latest economic projections from France's central bank, the Banque de France.
The revision announced by Lombard did not go as far as one that the prime minister recently hinted at: François Bayrou estimated, in an interview with the newspaper Le Parisien on April 5, that the trade war would cost France 0.5 points of growth. If this figure had been echoed by the economy minister, the 2025 growth prediction would, therefore, be 0.4% today, not 0.7%.
Less pessimistic than the prime minister's office, the Economy Ministry also appears more optimistic than the French Economic Observatory (OFCE). In its forecasts published on April 9, the observatory anticipated just 0.5% growth for the country in 2025, before returning to 1.1% in 2026. In its previous forecasts, dating back to the fall, the OFCE expected 0.8% growth in 2025. The direct impact of the tariffs and economic uncertainties would, according to the body, cost France 0.6 points of GDP this year. Italy, which is much more vulnerable to the American measures than France, halved its 2025 growth forecast to 0.6% on Wednesday.
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