The 'new France' loves U.S. business
By Thor Valdmanis
USA Today
NEW YORK — Speak no more of anti-American Gaullist politicians, tire-burning striking farmers and the retrograde 35-hour workweek — France is to be rebranded as a haven for U.S. companies.
At a recent salmon-and-burgundy lunch at the sumptuous French Consulate on Fifth Avenue in New York, Jean-David Levitte, ambassador to the United States, made it clear his country is open for business.
"More and more the old Europe is becoming the new France," Levitte says with a wide grin. "Since the days of Washington and Lafayette, our countries have been partners. We wish to build on that."
France has earmarked $12 million over three years to the New France campaign in recognition that the country needs to upgrade its anti-business, low-tech image.
Target audiences include the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and China.
Driving France's effort to become the primary destination for foreign capital is Clara Gaymard, France's ambassador for international investment.
A rollerblading 44-year-old mother of eight, Gaymard, wife of the French agriculture minister, stresses that the United States is "our biggest market, our first market."
Despite icy relations between Washington and Paris over Iraq and other issues, the French government says the United States is the leading investor in France, supporting almost 550,000 French jobs, while France is the No. 2 investor in the United States, where its companies account for nearly 600,000 American jobs. About $1 billion in commercial transactions take place between the two nations every business day.
The French, congenitally anti-British, desperately want to displace the dominant Anglo-American business axis.
"American companies always go to the U.K.," Gaymard says. "But the U.K. is not in Europe, not in the Eurozone."
Euro-skeptics such as author P.J. O'Rourke wonder aloud whether a country that rhymes with underpants can really persuade American CEOs to open their pocketbooks.
Indeed, U.S. investment in France last year dropped by more than half to a paltry $1.5 billion.
Even Gaymard admits France suffers from a reputation of meddling tax-and-spend politicians, militant labor unions and arrogant workers.
Edward Prescott, the 2004 Nobel prize winner in economics, points out that lower-taxed Americans, on a per-person basis, work 50 percent more than the French. Based on the same labor market statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, German and Italian workers do not fare much better.
"I understand the misperception of France," Gaymard says. "We have not been as business orientated as we are now. But we have changed a lot in the last two years."
Gaymard claims France enjoys fewer days lost to strikes than the U.K. or the United States and that France ranks second in the world in hourly productivity, ahead of the United States.
She also cites 50 recent reforms designed to attract more investment. Among them, a wide array of tax benefits, faster visa approvals, work permits for spouses, elimination of the minimum capital requirement for small startups and easier procedures for sacking employees.
