Marine Le Pen attacked the “bad” and “unfair” economic record of Emmanuel Macron, whom she described as the “Mozart of finance”, while the outgoing president assured that he had “protected” thanks to the “whatever” it costs”, during the debate between the two rounds. “You explain to us that you have made a lot of effort for the most modest, me, what I see is that there are 400,000 additional poor people under your five-year term, we are in a country where there are 9.8 million poor”, launched the candidate of the National Rally.
“You say you are very good at economics, that companies love you, but there is a 400 billion trade balance deficit, an absolute record,” she added. And the far-right candidate to evoke “the most brutal and cruel figure, productivity, which picks up from your election”, the “14,500 industrial jobs lost”, “an even worse social balance sheet”.
Le Pen attacks Macron on the abolition of the ISF
According to her, “we must have economic patriotism, relocate, reindustrialize, we must help VSEs and SMEs by granting them tax reductions”. And, she pinged, “not to large groups as you did, because when you talk about tax cuts you always talk about the big ones and not the small ones”, citing the abolition of the ISF. “It is the (removal of) the housing tax from afar” which was the biggest tax cut, immediately retorted Emmanuel Macron, “let everyone go look at the figures”.
According to estimates, the abolition of the ISF represents around 3 to 3.4 billion euros per year, and that of the housing tax around 17 billion in a full year.
Macron accused of being expensive
Emmanuel Macron went on to defend “whatever the cost”: “Let restaurateurs, craftsmen, traders, small industrialists come and tell you who is helping them during the covid crisis, the solidarity fund, partial unemployment, the guarantee, sometimes with the assumption of their own contributions, it is the government”. Emmanuel Macron underlined: “I’m proud of it, it’s the nation’s money, this debt of 600 billion, we built it up together, to protect” during the Covid-19 crisis.
The two finalists had fallen out a little earlier on this amount, Marine Le Pen accusing the outgoing president, “qualified by some of the Mozarts of finance”, of having been expensive outside the Covid crisis.
“But it’s because (this figure includes) Social Security and local authorities, Ms. Le Pen, ouch ouch ouch, stop confusing everything, it’s not possible”, mocked Emmanuel Macron.