{"id":655987,"date":"2026-05-07T17:53:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T17:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/655987\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T17:53:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T17:53:13","slug":"french-trade-deficit-widened-in-march-as-energy-imports-start-to-push-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/655987\/","title":{"rendered":"French trade deficit widened in March as energy imports start to push up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text-align-justify\" data-v-6bf95c48=\"\">Given the fallout from the Middle East conflict, this isn&#8217;t surprising. We&#8217;ve seen a similar episode before during the Russia-Ukraine war, so this will very much follow the same path. As energy prices keep higher, expect that to have a more significant toll on the French trade balance in the months to come.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-align-justify\" data-v-6bf95c48=\"\">For some context, France imports nearly 99% of its fossil fuel consumption. So, one can reasonably expect that to balloon much higher especially if energy prices continue to hold higher &#8211; even if not surging to fresh highs. Physical prices remain elevated, even if the situation this week might reflect some calm in futures prices.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-align-justify\" data-v-6bf95c48=\"\">The DE category marked above covers everything from crude oil, natural gas, coal, and imported power. The only thing that isn&#8217;t covered is refined gasoline, which falls under the C2 category.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-align-justify\" data-v-6bf95c48=\"\">So, keep an eye out for this one as it will continue to keep the French trade deficit in a tough spot in the months ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Given the fallout from the Middle East conflict, this isn&#8217;t surprising. We&#8217;ve seen a similar episode before during&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164],"class_list":["post-655987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}