Source: Fortune
Summary
French authorities confirmed that a fire at Limoges’ City Hall was intentional, with over 2,400 arrests and hundreds of businesses looted during protests. France’s public debt stands at 119% of GDP, while the U.S. debt is at 100.2% of GDP. French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu faces a critical vote on his budget, while the U.S. ran a $1.992 trillion deficit in 2026. Both countries face economic challenges, including rising debt and public discontent over living costs and education systems.
Our Reading
The announcement sounds familiar.
France’s riots stem from economic strain and public frustration.
U.S. debt and growth patterns mirror France’s challenges.
Bond markets react similarly to both countries’ fiscal policies.
Both nations face political and economic uncertainty, with no clear resolution in sight.
Author: Evan Null
The same trap
Start with the debt. French public debt sits at a record 119% of GDP, while U.S. debt held by the public reached 100.2% of GDP at the end of March. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s budget, which would cut France’s deficit to 5% of GDP from 5.4%, faces its first critical vote in the National Assembly on Tuesday. Washington ran a $1.992 trillion deficit in fiscal 2026, about 6.2% of GDP based on CBO’s projections. Needless to say, that’s wider than the 5.4% deficit France is rioting over.
Where the anger started
France’s protests began in classrooms. In mid-September, high-school students in the Paris suburbs walked out over missing teachers, overcrowded rooms and buildings that can’t handle the heat. They blamed years of underinvestment. Teachers and unions joined, then people angry about fuel prices and the cost of living. American schools show the same strain, and on some measures, it’s worse. Lost class time: in France, 9.8% of teaching hours in public middle and high schools went undelivered in 2024–25, mostly because absent teachers weren’t replaced, according to the Education Ministry’s statistics office. In the U.S., the GAO found that 19% of school districts canceled classes that year because of building problems, costing about 2 million students roughly 3.5 million days of learning.
Staffing and qualifications
Nearly half of districts had chronic facility problems that disrupted learning. Staffing: at the start of this school year, 53% of French middle and high schools were missing at least one teacher, according to a survey of 1,033 schools by SNES-FSU, France’s largest secondary teachers’ union. At the start of 2024–25, 74% of U.S. public schools had trouble filling at least one vacancy with a fully certified teacher, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Qualifications: 11.1% of French secondary teachers aren’t fully qualified, according to the OECD. In the U.S., the Learning Policy Institute estimates 387,843 teachers aren’t fully certified for their assignments and calls that an undercount.
Trump and the blame game
President Trump sees another cause. “What’s happening in France is nothing less than out-of-control mass migration,” he posted on Truth Social on Oct. 6, adding that it “isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great country,” without addressing his own country’s fiscal similarities. Student demands have not mentioned immigration or religion. UBS Global Wealth Management chief economist Paul Donovan called the weekend’s violence “a different form of scapegoat economics” in a note to clients Monday.
Market reactions and warnings
The cushion holds as long as growth does. Market veteran Ed Yardeni argued last month that the U.S. economy is “less rate sensitive than it has ever been,” supported by wealthy retirees, large deficits and “an extraordinary AI investment boom.” Hanke and Walker end their column with a quote from the late MIT economist Rüdiger Dornbusch: “Crises take longer to arrive than you can possibly imagine, but when they do come, they happen faster than you can possibly imagine.”
