Donald Trump last failure about the abrogation of Obamacare promises some others. It is highly likely that the protectionist measures he is thinking about and which were the significant times of his electoral campaign will never be adopted. The transformation of the American tax system, except if VAT is adopted, to penalize imports and reduce enterprises charges, will not happen, as other than symbolic measures against Mexico. The reason is simple: United States has more to lose than to win in going in that direction. Imports taxation would penalize American consumers. Retaliatory measures adopted by the countries which are targeted would affect companies which are exporting in these countries. That policy would affect foreign investments on American territory and, at the end, jobs. Protectionism is an illusion and those who would experiment it, will understand that quickly. The history of the previous 50 years has proved it. Considering that, House of Representatives and  Senate members are quite conscious. And if they were not, powerful K Street lobbies, the place in Washington were they have their offices, near the Capitol, would certainly explain these issues to them, at major American corporations request.

Globalization is irreversible because it results from a powerful innovation trend which is not about to stop. It also corresponds to real aspirations of economic agents, even if some of them are not always conscious and if sometimes they refuse to admit it. The starting point was the fall of transport costs, regarding both goods and persons. Oil price rise has not been able to curb it. Economic consequences have been huge: new opportunities were opened to producers with the access to far located markets. Information exchanges development has followed. It was not limited to enterprises. The computer became a mass market product. Networks capacity has increased in a few years by huge proportions. During the same time, smaller and smaller but more and more powerful communication tools with a cost which plummeted, completely changed the way people were thinking about distances as about differences between them. Nobody can imagine today to go back with the instauration of barriers limiting communications. Now they frequently lead to goods and services exchanges through the whole planet. Who could imagine the free access to Internet and to all the services it gives being constrained by limitations?

World trade development has brought two major changes. It has hugely increased choice offered to consumers. Even if it has not been quantified, it exists among these ones a growing demand for more and more choice, for having access to a large range of different products. This demand can only be satisfied if the local market where they buy what they want is an open one. But that change has also put a beneficial pressure on local producers, on their prices and especially on quality with all its aspects. As soon as the market was closed, producers were not encouraged to make efforts to improve what they offer. Examples are abundant, from Eastern Germany before unification to Brazil today, including China under Mao or even India. Very few companies located in these countries succeeded on the world market when they open their own borders and many disappeared. The unfair competition coming from low-wages countries is frequently quoted when globalization is attacked. But it is omitted to note that if this kind of competition exists for every nation, some have successfully adapted their economies to it like Italy or Switzerland, not to quote Germany, which, years after years, enjoy substantial trade surplus when others, like France, which has a heavy deficit, continues to think that competition is a handicap and that it is indispensable to return to past practices. Regarding that, Marine Le Pen is along the same lines than Donald Trump in making a piece of nonsense about the real causes of the deficits in some countries and the surplus in others.

To withdraw France into itself, following Front National candidate and Jean Luc Melenchon proposals is not only a disavowal of its historical tradition and a blow to its worldwide influence. It will also lead to an economic disaster because countries which are our clients would retaliate by the same kind of measures. We export more than 20% of our GDP. Jobs, in these sectors would be hardly hit. As we import most of our raw materials, that would generate a heavier trade deficit, weaken our currency and force us to come back to past and awkward practices like devaluations. Massive impoverishment, jobs destruction, interest rates quickly rising and provoking a growing cost of the public debt, all the conditions would be gathered to send the French economy in an extremely serious crisis, whose first victims would be our compatriots.

The truth is that France has no choice. It is an illusion to believe that we can exit from globalization. The only answer is to adapt to it, to learn how to take from it an advantage and the priority is to understand mechanisms which regulate it, as, since a long period, our European neighbors have done. Contrary to what is repeated, it is not our structures we have to reform. It is our behaviors which have to be upgraded. First, the State and local authorities must take as an objective to reduce their costs and to improve the quality of public services. That will contribute to reduce public deficits and to stabilize levies. Then, consumers must understand, at last, that all benefits they get and they want to keep, are financed by the products and the services they buy. It is not a question of economic patriotism, a term which evokes a sacrifice, but it is in their fully understood interest. Change in their behavior is also necessary regarding public sector and businesses. We are talking frequently about production networks, i.e. the community of enterprises which work together to supply clients. They must act as partners and not, permanently, as enemies in trying to take an advantage against the others. It involves the reduction of payment delays, the development of long term cooperations when new technologies are on the agenda and, more generally, a necessary solidarity along each step of the production process. It is at this condition that the competitiveness of all the participants of the supply chain will be improved and not in creating a relation of power between clients and suppliers or in putting pressure on employees with the risk of reanimating a class fight where everybody would lose.

Globalization is today and tomorrow world. To refuse it or to condemn it is easy but leads nowhere as Donald Trump is about to experience. It would be a pity that France doesn’t take that lesson and move in a direction which is a dead end. to avoid it, our political class needs a minimum of lucidity and  teaching skill to help our country to make the necessary progress.