How Does One Say ‘Supply-Side’ in French?

The fall of the French prime minister, Michel Barnier, offers a chance for President Macron to acknowledge the message voters sent him in the summer’s parliamentary elections — if he chooses to accept it. So far the Frosty Frenchman has attempted to deny the strong showing of Marine Le Pen’s rightist National Rally in the legislative voting and earlier European Union elections. No wonder his choice of premier lacked a constituency in the legislature.The chaos now unfolding at Paris is best seen as a delayed reaction to the inconclusive results of those French parliamentary elections in July. The rightist National Rally earned 37 percent of the votes, yet ended up with but 25 percent of the seats in the legislature. Meanwhile, the left-wing bloc, the New Popular Front, was backed by only 26 percent of voters, yet won 33 percent of the seats. This in part reflects distortions of the French two-round electoral process.Even so, the results gave the French far left the largest coalition of seats in the parliament — far from the vindication Mr. Macron had sought for his more centrist party, which goes by the moniker Ensemble, or, in American, Together. The president had hoped that the voting would produce a “moment of clarification” and a repudiation of Madame Le Pen’s burgeoning conservative movement. It led instead to the far left demanding the premiership.Monsieur Macron, to his credit, resisted the far left’s siren call to name a prime minister. Yet he also by and large refused to cede any ground to the National Rally, despite the rightist party garnering the most votes. Bill Clinton, say, wouldn’t have made that error. If the president’s choice of Mr. Barnier was meant to bridge the gap between the factions in parliament, that appears to have been a miscalculation, despite Mr. Barnier showing signs of promise.The just-ousted premier, after all, had been “the master builder of a new European conservative coalition” in the European parliament, our Michel Gurfinkiel reported after his appointment. That coalition united “the Christian Democratic right, originally the backbone of European federalism,” Mr. Gurfinkiel added, along with “the Gaullist or nationalist right, which insists on keeping European nations sovereign within the EU framework.” “Only a Savoyard could achieve this,” Mr. Gurfinkiel quipped. The denizens of that region, he added, “are routinely depicted as religious, patriotic, and hard-working.” Yet these qualities, though admirable, were not enough to pave a path out of France’s political — and economic — morass. Mr. Barnier ran afoul of both right- and left-wing blocs in parliament in part because of his push for budgetary austerity. Is there a way to say “supply side” in French?It is testament to the trouble facing the French economy that Mr. Barnier’s budget sparked contention with the modest aim of lowering by 2025 the nation’s budget deficit to 5 percent from 6 percent of the gross domestic product. Yet the premier did himself no favors by refusing to treat with Madame Le Pen’s party “until too late,” as the Financial Times puts it, “and then had to offer costly concessions, which still proved insufficient.”Mr. Barnier’s ouster will likely roil already-unsettled markets and prompt fretting over France being, as the FT puts it, “on the political brink.” The solution is for Mr. Macron to honor the will of French voters. Some 43 percent of them voted for rightist parties. That suggests the logic of naming a conservative premier who can forge a solid coalition with Mr. Macron’s party, which has 28 percent of seats in parliament.Our quip above about whether there’s a way to say supply-side in French is not entirely a joke. Mr. Barnier’s departure is a reminder that the real opportunity for the French right — whether under the aegis of Madame Le Pen or Monsieur Macron — is to provide relief for the long-suffering French with a program of economic reform. That would include tax cuts, deregulation, and the restoration of the Franc — which De Gaulle insisted should be defined in gold.

How Does One Say ‘Supply-Side’ in French?

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