Economy

Ironing out the 2026 budget of the euro zone’s second-largest economy will prove a “demanding” task, French Economy Minister Eric Lombard told CNBC.
“2026, yes, it is a very demanding budget, because we will continue to diminish the deficit and to be below, of course, below 5.4%, and probably below 5%,” the economy minister told CNBC on Monday, noting that the final target hadn’t been set in stone. 
The absence of a budget and broader instability in French politics has bled into markets over recent months. Lombard conceded a “negative impact on growth,” expressing hope that investors will now return to France.

Ironing out the 2026 budget of the euro zone’s second-largest economy will prove a “demanding” task, French Economy Minister Eric Lombard told CNBC’s Charlotte Reed, after lawmakers earlier this month finally adopted 2025’s financial plan after a spate of tumultuous, government-toppling attempts.
France has charted a trajectory to reduce its public deficit, aiming to reach 5.4% of the national GDP in 2025 and to dip below 3% in 2029, Lombard said. Under European Union spending rules, member states must keep their deficits below 3% of GDP.  

“2026, yes, it is a very demanding budget, because we will continue to diminish the deficit and to be below, of course, below 5.4%, and probably below 5%,” the economy minister told CNBC on Monday, noting that the final target hadn’t been set in stone. 
“We are going to work with all the political parties … to discuss, to talk with us. We are going, also, to work with the unions, with the employers, in order to reach a consensus on the main policies that are key for the country, and policies on which we can make adjustments that will allow us to spend less in 2026,” he said.
The absence of a budget and broader instability in French politics has bled into markets over recent months. Lombard conceded a “negative impact on growth,” expressing hope that investors will now return to France.
The country’s economic performance shriveled with a 0.1% contraction in the fourth quarter, from from 0.4% growth in the preceding three months, with the Bank of France expecting a meager 0.1-0.2% rise in the national GDP in the first quarter amid anticipated increases in market services and the energy sector, according to its latest monthly business survey. The International Monetary Fund anticipates the French economy will expand by 0.8% across the full-year 2025 period.

Pension reform

Now the budget has been finalized, focus has returned to the fate of discussions over French President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial — and highly contested — 2023 pension reform, which seeks to gradually lift the retirement age from 62 to 64 in a bid to keep the system solvent.

France’s new Prime Minister Francois Bayrou has signaled that the legislation could return to the agenda — providing something of a litmus test for those watching France’s efforts to rein in its deficits.
“I totally trust the representatives of the workers and of the employers,” Lombard told CNBC’s Reed. “And so they know that their responsibility is to find adjustment … And they have three months to do that, I am confident they can reach an agreement on that, and if they reach an agreement, of course, it will be put in front of the parliament, hopefully to be in the law as soon as this year.”
Fitch Ratings earlier this month struck a negative tone over a potential repeal of the legislation.
“Any rolling back of the reform could undo some of the planned fiscal consolidation over the medium term and would be moderately negative for the medium-term fiscal outlook, in our view. France’s pension-related expenditures are among the highest in the EU,” FitchRatings warned in a Feb. 10 note. More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Australia’s central bank on Tuesday cut interest rates for the first time in more than four years, as inflation pressures began to show signs of easing more quickly than expected.  The Reserve Bank of Australia cut its cash rate by 0.25 percentage points to 4.10 per cent in what governor Michele Bullock said was a carefully balanced decision given the country’s tight labour market and global uncertainty caused by US President Donald Trump’s trade war.“We cannot declare victory on inflation yet,” she said, adding that the bank was alert to the risks of cutting “too much, too soon” and questioning market views that it could enact three further reductions this year.The rate cut, the RBA’s first since November 2020, came as Australia prepares for a nationwide election against a backdrop of elevated costs of living.Show video infoThe central bank has been under pressure to begin easing its monetary policy, with some economists warning that the strain of higher borrowing costs on mortgage holders could push the country into recession.In a statement, the RBA said it would retain a restrictive policy. “While today’s policy decision recognises the welcome progress on inflation, the board remains cautious on prospects for further policy easing,” it said, noting that other central banks, including the US Federal Reserve, have slowed their pace of rate cuts in recent months. Australia is due to hold an election by mid-May, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has yet to set a date. Political strategists had seen a rate cut as a critical moment ahead of the polls. Jim Chalmers, Australia’s Treasurer, welcomed the move as “the rate relief Australians need and deserve”, but that it was not yet “mission accomplished”, noting: “It won’t solve every problem in our economy or in household budgets but it will help.”Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.The cut on Tuesday began the process of reversing a run of 13 rate rises since May 2022. The RBA, which was more cautious in raising rates two years ago, has also been slower to begin reducing them, and the move came as other central banks have shifted to a more hawkish stance as inflation has persisted.But economists had pencilled in the long-awaited cut after official data released last month showed headline inflation in Australia fell to 2.4 per cent in the December quarter from 2.8 per cent in the previous three months.The upcoming election is expected to be contested over the cost of living and the Labor government’s economic management.The country’s largest banks committed to passing the rate cut on to mortgage holders. Bullock said she understood that thousands of Australians were “hurting” as a result of the RBA’s rate caution, but said the central bank’s focus remained getting goods and services inflation under control, adding: “That’s hurting you, too.”Andrew Grant at the University of Sydney Business School said the rate cut would ease some of the pain of the cost of living for Australians, particularly those holding large mortgages. “Anything that puts a few dollars back in people’s pockets each month is going to be a huge relief.”Gareth Aird, an economist with Commonwealth Bank, said it would have been a “harder sell” for the RBA to hold rates, with inflation trending lower and wage growth cooling. He added that the timing ahead of the election had created an unusually “emotionally charged” environment around the rate decision. The central bank had held rates at 4.35 per cent since November 2023 over concerns about inflation, which has remained above its target range of 2-3 per cent. The RBA’s preferred “trimmed mean” measure of inflation, which excludes volatile factors such as petrol prices, dropped to 3.2 per cent year on year in the December quarter, from 3.6 per cent in the previous quarter. More

US gas exports are the most likely beneficiaries of a pledge by Donald Trump and Narendra Modi to make India a leading buyer of American energy, analysts said, as the world’s fastest-growing big country sucks in more fossil fuels from around the world.Modi and Trump, meeting last week for the first time since the US president’s inauguration, agreed to increase American oil and gas exports as part of efforts to rebalance the two countries’ trade relationship.At the moment, Russia is the main supplier of crude to India, while Qatar is the biggest provider of liquefied natural gas.The US is the world’s largest LNG exporter, and already accounted for about a fifth of India’s supplies in 2024. But the leaders’ commitment, which came after Trump called India a “tariff king” and “big abuser” and threatened reciprocal tariffs, has the potential to expand the market for US suppliers, experts say. “Gas will be the real deal. India is one of the last untapped markets for gas globally which has scale,” said Rajeev Lala, director of upstream solutions at S&P Global. Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.At a time of more benign prices for US gas exports, “we are ready to take more natural gas”, said Arvinder Singh Sahney, chair of the Indian Oil Corporation, one of India’s top importers. In a report released last week, the International Energy Agency said India’s natural gas consumption would increase by nearly 60 per cent by 2030, with LNG imports set to more than double in the same period driven by steady demand growth and a much slower rise in domestic production.India Business BriefingThe Indian professional’s must-read on business and policy in the world’s fastest-growing large economy. Sign up for the newsletter hereIn 2023, India’s total net gas production met just about half of its demand.“There’s potential for India to buy more from all sources,” India’s oil and gas minister Hardeep Singh Puri told the Financial Times in an interview shortly before the leaders’ meeting. “In India there’s great appetite for more energy.”The government’s “primary policy decision is to take the share of natural gas in our energy mix from 6 per cent to 15 per cent by 2030”, for which India would need to import more gas, he said. A liquefied natural gas storage tank at the Dhamra LNG terminal near Dhamra port in India More

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The first earnings season of 2025 has offered an early glimpse into how America’s largest companies expect President Donald Trump’s policies to impact their businesses.
Words like tariff and immigration are popping up at a higher frequency on the earnings calls of S&P 500-listed firms as Trump prioritizes policies around these themes, a CNBC data analysis shows.

CEO of Meta and Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attend the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th US President in the US Capitol Rotunda in Washington, DC, on Jan. 20, 2025.
Saul Loeb | Via Reuters

During Mettler-Toledo’s earnings call earlier this month, executives found themselves fielding a barrage of questions about one key topic: tariffs.
The Ohio-based maker of industrial scales and laboratory equipment had already opened the call by breaking down the expected impact from President Donald Trump’s still-evolving trade policy. But when the event transitioned to the question-and-answer portion, the inquiries from analysts seeking further detail about potential tariffs were constant.

“Uncertainty remains across many of our core markets and the global economy,” Finance Chief Shawn Vadala said on the Feb. 7 call. “Geopolitical tensions remain elevated, and include the potential for new tariffs that we have not factored into our guidance.”
Mettler-Toledo’s experience wasn’t unique. America’s largest companies are getting inundated with queries about how or if Trump’s salvo of promises on issues ranging from international trade to immigration and diversity will alter businesses.
A CNBC analysis shows multiple core themes tied to Trump’s policies are popping up on the earnings calls of S&P 500-listed companies at an increasing clip. Take “tariff.” Just weeks into the new year, the frequency of the word and its variations on earnings calls hit its highest level since 2020 — the last full year of Trump’s first term.
On top of that, new acronyms and phrases, like the “Gulf of America” or “DOGE,” have found their way into these meetings as the business community assesses what Trump’s return to power means for them.
Curiously, Trump himself wasn’t racking up mentions on these calls. Many uses of the word “trump” in transcripts reviewed by CNBC referred to the verb, rather than the president.

FILE PHOTO: A logo sign outside of a facility occupied by Mettler Toledo in Columbia, Maryland on March 8, 2020.
Kristoffer Tripplaar | Sipa USA | AP

Still, a review of call transcripts shows how key words tied to Trump’s policies have quickly become commonplace. With the first earnings season of 2025 more than 75% complete, the comments offer an early glimpse into how these companies view the new administration.

Tariffs

One of the most talked about policies has been Trump’s tariff plans. The president briefly implemented — and then postponed — 25% taxes on imports to the U.S. from Mexico and Canada. He also separately slapped China with a 10% levy and imposed aluminum and steel tariffs. Then, on Thursday, he discussed a plan to impose retaliatory tariffs on other trading partners on a country-by-country basis.
Given the uncertainty, it’s no surprise tariffs are a hot topic. The topic has come up on more than 190 calls held by S&P 500 companies in 2025, putting it on track to see the highest share in half of a decade.

The frequency picked up late last year as Trump’s return to the White House became clear. About half of calls in 2024 that mentioned forms of the word took place in the fourth quarter, according to a CNBC analysis of data from FactSet, a market research service.
“Studying tariffs has been at the top of the list of things that we’ve been doing,” said Marathon Petroleum CEO Maryann Mannen on the energy company’s Feb. 4 earnings call.
Several companies said they were not factoring potential impacts from these levies into their guidance, citing uncertainty about what orders will actually go into place. Others just aren’t sure: At Martin Marietta Materials, CFO James Nickolas said the supplier’s profits could either benefit or take a hit from tariffs depending on what form ultimately takes effect.
While Generac didn’t calculate how these import taxes could affect future performance, CEO Aaron Jagdfeld said the generator maker is ready to mitigate the financial hit by reducing costs elsewhere and raising its prices. Camden Property Trust CEO Richard Campo said a company analysis shows proposed tariffs would push up costs for materials from Canada and Mexico like lumber and electrical boxes. These comments offer support to the idea that Trump’s tariffs may drive up consumer prices and fan inflation.

Aaron Jagdfeld, CEO, Generac
Scott Mlyn | CNBC

Zebra Technologies CFO Nathan Winters said price increases could help mitigate profit pressure. Auto parts maker BorgWarner, meanwhile, anticipates another year of declining demand in certain markets, which CFO Craig Aaron attributed in part to potential headwinds from these levies.
Cisco’s R. Scott Herren agreed with other executives on the lack of clarity, describing the tariff situation as “dynamic” on the networking equipment maker’s earnings call last week. Still, the CFO said the company has planned for some variation of Trump’s tariff proposals to take effect and is expecting costs to increase as a result.
“We’ve game planned out several scenarios and steps we could take depending on what actually goes into effect,” he said.

Immigration

The topic of immigration, meanwhile, has already come up on the highest share of calls since 2017.
Trump has promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants during his second term in office. Cracking down on immigration has been a core component of Trump’s political messaging since he ran in part to “build the wall” between the U.S. and Mexico for his first term. Critics assert that his plans would shock the labor market and could result in higher inflation.
Immigration mentions tend to tick up during the first year of a new administration, CNBC data shows. But 2025 has surpassed the first years of Joe Biden’s presidency and Barack Obama’s second term, underscoring Trump’s role in elevating the issue within U.S. businesses.

Some companies grouped immigration with tariffs as drivers of broader unpredictability within the economy. Nicholas Pinchuk, CEO of toolmaker Snap-On, described anecdotes of strong demand for repair services from its clients, but said they were still stressed by red flags in the economic backdrop.
“It’s clear the techs are in a good position. But that doesn’t make them immune to the macro uncertainty around them: ongoing wars, immigration disputes, lingering inflation,” Pinchuk said. “Although the election is in the rear mirror and the new team may be more focused on business expansion, there’s a rapid fire of new initiatives. … It’s hard not to be uncertain about what’s up.”
Firms in a variety of sectors took questions about what changes in the composition of America’s population would mean. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile all fielded questions about whether a slowdown in immigration would hurt demand for certain phone plans. Michael Manelis, operations chief at apartment manager Equity Residential, said in response to an immigration-related inquiry that it hasn’t seen any upticks in lease breaks from tenants being deported.
In the Southern California market, real estate developer Prologis CEO Hamid Moghadam said deportations can decrease the pool of workers and, in turn, drive up employment costs in the region. That can exacerbate pricing pressures already expected as the Los Angeles community rebuilds in the wake of last month’s wildfires.

Employees of Tyson Foods
Greg Smith | Corbis SABA | Getty Images

Other businesses insisted deportations wouldn’t create labor shortages for their operations because all of their workers are legally authorized. One such company, chicken producer Tyson Foods, said it hasn’t had factories visited by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or seen any declines in worker attendance.
“We’re confident that we’ll be able to continue to successfully run our business,” CEO Donnie King said on Feb. 3.

DOGE and the Gulf

Topics that gained newfound relevance with Trump’s return to office have also already started emerging.
DOGE — the acronym for the new Department of Government Efficiency led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk — has been mentioned on more than 15 calls, as of Friday morning. This department has put Wall Street on alert as investors wonder if contracts between public companies and federal agencies could be on the chopping block with Musk’s team slashing spending.
Iron Mountain’s mine that stores government retirement records was ripped as an example of inefficiency by Musk during a visit to the Oval Office. But surprisingly, CEO Bill Meaney said the push for streamlining can actually benefit other parts of its business.
“As the government continues to drive to be more efficient, we see this as a continued opportunity for the company,” he said last week.

A man exits the Iron Mountain Inc. data storage facility in Boyers, Pennsylvania, U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018. The underground data center, located in a former limestone mine, stores 200 acres of physical data for many clients including the federal government.
Stephanie Strasburg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Executives at Palantir, the defensive technology company that was a top performer within the S&P 500 last year, are similarly hopeful. Technology Chief Shyam Sankar described Palantir’s work with the government as “operational” and “valuable,” and is hopeful that DOGE engineers will be “able to see that for a change.”
“I think DOGE is going to bring meritocracy and transparency to government, and that’s exactly what our commercial business is,” Sankar said during the company’s Feb. 3 call. “The commercial market is meritocratic and transparent, and you see the results that we have in that sort of environment. And that’s the basis of our optimism around this.”
He noted some concerns among other government software providers, and called those agreements “sacred cows of the deep state” during the call.
Elsewhere, the so-called Gulf of America has been a point of divergence after Trump’s executive order renaming what has long been known as the Gulf of Mexico. Chevron used the moniker Gulf of America repeatedly in its earnings release and on its call with analysts late last month. But Exxon Mobil, which held its earnings call the same day, opted instead to refer to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico.

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This article is an on-site version of our Trade Secrets newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every Monday. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newsletters“Reciprocity”: yeah, right. Do me a favour. Don’t believe a word of it. He’s having a laugh. Sorry, where was I? Ah yes. Welcome to Trade Secrets. If you’re one of my new readers, you’ve chosen an exciting time to join. We start week five of the Trump administration with the president having threatened five sets of wildly destructive tariffs (Colombia, China, Canada and Mexico, steel and aluminium and so-called “reciprocal”) and deferred all but one to some time in the next couple of months. The last of these, unveiled last week, is undoubtedly the wackiest yet. In today’s newsletter I explain why it’s best seen as Trump discarding even a token attempt at rules-bound consistency and simply making it up as he goes along. Meanwhile, a much bigger threat to globalisation (as I’ve written about before) escalated last week with Trump’s alignment with Russia over the Ukraine invasion, increasing the likelihood of indefinite chaos on Europe’s eastern flank and weakening the EU. The Charted Waters section, which looks at the data behind world trade, is on the dollar.Get in touch. Email me at alan.beattie@ft.comUS trade policy is turning a bit ChineseA shout-out to my colleagues on the reporting side (who are performing utter heroics, it looks like a lot of work) for putting the R word in quote marks in the headlines of our news coverage and analysis, and I’ll follow their lead. This plan isn’t “reciprocity”. It’s mercantilism laced with narcissism and caprice.As I’ve written before, the Trump campaign platform contained a plan for a somewhat logical — if prohibitively complicated and destructive — policy where the US matches the tariffs its trading partners impose on US goods with equivalent tariffs of its own. The idea has some historical symmetry: it somewhat resembles Franklin D Roosevelt’s Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934, which was designed to reverse out of the high-tariff Smoot-Hawley era and ended up paving the way for the postwar multilateral trading system. Of course, by destroying the most-favoured nation basis of said system, Trump’s plan would be going the other way.I said it was either politically impossible — because it would mean cutting US tariffs for highly protected American producers, such as sugarcane growers — or it would be partially and hypocritically implemented. SURPRISE! It’s the latter. In fact, it’s worse than the latter.The plan, bearing the heavy imprint of White House trade warrior Peter Navarro, allows the US to punish a trading partner not just for tariffs higher than the US equivalent, but also for using a value added tax (a long-standing obsession of some trade folk in Washington) or other taxes Trump doesn’t like, maintaining inconvenient regulations, being mean to the US tech industry, having a misaligned currency, looking at the US in a funny way, wearing white after Labor Day and so on and on. It’s the toxic stew from a cauldron of trade grievances which has been bubbling away for years.Here’s the way I think about it. “Reciprocity” is simply what Trump and Navarro say it is. The US is giving itself multiple tools to impose whatever tariffs it likes for whatever reason it can make up on a highly flexible, legal basis, with a series of arbitrary and eminently mutable deadlines. On top of the tariffs it already has on China, the US now has 25 per cent fentanyl-and-immigration tariffs supposedly now due on Canada and Mexico on March 4; across-the-board steel and aluminium tariffs on March 12; and this “reciprocal” nonsense, which is to be discussed in the light of various reports Trump has commissioned for April 1 and imposed God knows when after that. The ad hoc assembly of such tariff weaponry appears largely designed to create negotiating leverage for concessions or bribes, and if carried through, marks the end of the US domestic rules-based system.Being slightly fanciful, in some ways the US is turning a bit Chinese. It’s got an increasingly centralised, crony-ish presidency running export-oriented mercantilism, while dishing out support through trade restrictions and sometimes subsidies to favoured industries. It’s also willing to use tariffs and blocks on imports as a coercive tool of foreign policy — in President Xi Jinping’s case, Australia and Lithuania; in Trump’s case, Colombia, Mexico, Canada and now apparently everyone else.There’s one somewhat obvious difference. China has been honing the ability of its bureaucracy literally for centuries, having held its first competitive civil service written exams in the sixth century CE. Trump is allowing Elon Musk and his vandals to rampage through the US federal civil service, wantonly destroying its administrative capacity. I sense this will not end well for the US.How do you solve a problem like Navarro?OK, so enough of the horror story. What are multinationals and trading partner governments to do?First of all, let’s remember that all of this might come to nothing, or to not very much. Of the five sets of tariffs Trump has so far threatened, he’s only implemented one of them (China). It remains notable — far from definitive, since investors can be completely wrong, but at least notable — that financial markets clearly don’t believe there will be some massive, dislocating change.Second, it’s surely going to be a bad idea to play the “reciprocal” game. Cutting tariffs to match the US equivalent will destroy the most-favoured nation basis of the multilateral trading system. If the rest of the world is going to try to trade more among themselves, that system, very imperfect though it is, will be the bedrock of it. And what’s the guarantee the US would keep its side of the bargain anyway? This is Trump we’re talking about. It seems even less wise for governments to do anything as drastic as dismantling their VAT systems in the hope of getting an easier ride.Third, it’s not going to be very practical to co-ordinate retaliation between different trading partners, given their different capacities and trading patterns. The idea of everyone tariffing Elon Musk’s Teslas is a nice one, though tricky for the EU and China, which both have Tesla factories. But governments could at least (as did Canada and Mexico, as I wrote the other week) have a plan for what they’re likely to do and have it ready to go into action as soon as possible.Something that hits Trump hard without doing immediate damage to the retaliator’s economy is obviously ideal: the EU can do something on tech regulation, for example. Imagine if Trump and Navarro announce a start date for the “reciprocal” tariffs and are immediately met with a global array of retaliation threats bristling with trade, investment and regulatory weaponry. Even they might balk at starting a generalised trade war with the rest of the world.Fourth, if the US signals clearly enough that it’s about to hit their exports, foreign companies (perhaps with support from their government) can plan to do exactly what the Chinese did last time — find their way round through a connector country. If I were an Indian manufacturer dependent on US consumers, I’d be planning contingencies for how I could route my exports or even invest in stop-off countries. We could end up with a truly global game of whack-a-mole. And although there will be a lot of disruption in the short run, in the medium term I’d bet on the world’s supply chain superheroes to outfox Navarro.Overall, the thing is this. To haul out the old saying attributed to one or other French wits of the 18th and 19th centuries, for the US to start a generalised global trade war against the rest of the world is more than a crime — it’s a blunder. If the US genuinely tries to close its overall deficit with big tariffs all round, it will cause a crunching recession. If Trump discriminates between trading partners, the heavily tariffed ones can nip through the side door of those who escaped more lightly. Charted watersThere’s not much sign yet of the weak dollar on which Trump is intermittently keen, nor much clear direction from the administration. His Treasury secretary Scott Bessent last week quixotically decided to try to wrestle a tautology into submission by making the splendidly meaningless claim that the US having a strong dollar policy didn’t mean other countries could have a weak currency policy. I know, right? Me neither.Trade linksThe FT explains how Trump’s savaging of USAID is affecting development assistance worldwide. The think-tank MERICS looks at how well China is positioned for a trade war with the US.The EU is considering banning more imports of food products not made to EU regulatory standards, particularly as regards the use of pesticides.Hosuk Lee-Makiyama for the ECIPE think-tank looks at the trade and security situation in the far north Atlantic.I was a guest last week on the FT’s peerless Unhedged markets and finance podcast to talk about tariffs, steel and the uselessness of the giant panda. Trade Secrets is edited by Harvey NriapiaRecommended newsletters for youChris Giles on Central Banks — Vital news and views on what central banks are thinking, inflation, interest rates and money. Sign up hereFT Swamp Notes — Expert insight on the intersection of money and power in US politics. Sign up here More

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