French industry is starting to signal its opposition to French National Front leader and presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.
Lobby groups representing more than 13 percent of the French economy and 3.1 million jobs held a policy debate with the main presidential campaigns on Tuesday and Le Pen’s team was not invited — her plan to pull France out of the euro and introduce protectionist measures meant that she would not have made a positive contribution to the debate, industry leaders said.
“It wasn’t useful to speak with candidates who don’t defend European ideas,” French Group of Industrial Federations director Vincent Moulin Wright said in an interview.
Photo: EPA
Investors and executives have been unnerved by the prospect of Le Pen emerging from the most open election in living memory with a mandate to withdraw from the European currency union.
French bonds have whipsawed with the ebb and flow of her campaign. Ten-year yields reached their highest in 16 months last month as the nationalist gained momentum and they have shed 25 basis points since then as centrist French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron bolstered his own bid with a series of key endorsements.
Macron will be seeking to consolidate his advantage when he sets out the detail of his policy proposals today. Le Pen will be aiming to demonstrate her own credentials on the economy when she gives a speech the same night.
While Le Pen is favorite to win the first-round vote on April 23, no poll yet has shown her coming within even 10 percentage points of victory in the run-off on May 7.
“I think I know why I wasn’t asked to speak,” Le Pen said in a statement on her Web site. “There’s total panic in a system that is off the rails.”
Also excluded was far-left French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, who has promised to review all of France’s commitments to the EU.
Le Pen’s National Front team was left off the guest list because the discussion was focused on competitiveness within the EU and she is opposed to French membership of the bloc, said Michel Grandjean, head of the French Federation for Mechanical Industries, which represents 629,000 employees and 30,200 companies including trainmaker Alstom SA.
Le Pen and Melenchon’s demand for more protection for French companies also ran counter to the focus of the debate, he said.
“Competitiveness implies free trade, which is not an option that Le Pen or Melenchon have supported,” Grandjean said, describing the National Front leader’s response as “sharp.”
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
RSS