Chronic. Officially, he is not yet in the race. Even if, as he confided to the readers of the Parisen, January 4, “there is no false suspense” : ” I want to. » Emmanuel Macron finds himself, less than three months before the ballot, the last undeclared candidate for the presidency of the Republic. It does not yet have a detailed program, unlike most of its competitors.
In the economic field, as elsewhere (security, Europe), the Head of State sticks to his method: discuss a few subjects – overhaul of inheritance rights, universal income from activity – and defend his balance sheet. The same goes for his Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, who detailed at length, during his wishes to the press, his ambitions for additional tax cuts for companies and reduction of contributions on high salaries. But nothing that does not look like, for the moment, proposals in good and due form.
It must be said that, in five years and two major crises, those of the “yellow vests” and the interminable Covid-19 pandemic, the debate has shifted. In 2017, on the economy side, the campaign was focused on the inversion of the unemployment curve, to which François Hollande had inadvertently linked his candidacy. Debt reduction on the right – François Fillon had to defend himself from advocating ” blood and tears “ – or the exit from the euro (La France insoumise, Rassemblement national) also occupied the debates. At the start of 2022, we are talking more about inflation and purchasing power, relocations, relaxation of budgetary rules and investments.
Green lights
For the Head of State, however, a red thread remains: that of businesses and employment. A “supply policy” that Emmanuel Macron has always advocated – favoring long-term investment and support for businesses in the hope of ultimately creating growth and jobs – and which he again praised at the start of week in front of foreign bosses, as part of the annual Choose France seduction operation.
For the executive, the thing is understood: it is the policy of supply and its corollary, the reduction in taxation on capital and the abolition of the ISF, which have made it possible to revive the tricolor economic machine, in particular by boosting its attractiveness. It does not matter that the momentum was set in motion at the end of the Hollande five-year term, with the introduction of the tax credit for competitiveness and employment, and that successive reports by economists struggle to highlight a quantifiable relationship between the renewed vigor of the economy and this or that government measure. Symbols are as important in economics as in politics, and the signals sent to investors and big bosses over the past five years have certainly worked in favor of France. But was it worth the money spent? Impossible to say precisely.
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