Bayrou argues around 44 billion euros ($51 billion) in budget cuts are needed to reduce the French deficit, which totaled 5.8% of GDP in 2024, with his proposals including freezing welfare and pension spending, as well as tax brackets, at 2025 levels.<\/p>\n
Erik Nelson, head of G10 FX strategy at Wells Fargo, called the outlook for French assets “not great” \u2014 but said the outcome for Bayrou’s government was not a foregone conclusion.<\/p>\n
“I think part of the issue here is that European equities, the euro itself, have been a very popular momentum trade throughout the year. What we’re seeing in the last couple of days has been a little bit of unwind.”<\/p>\n
“I don’t know that Bayrou is definitely out. There’s still some uncertainty there. He’s got a lot of things he can offer the opposition,” Nelson continued, including that the French minister could back away from a contentious proposal to cut two public holidays.<\/p>\n
“They’re walking a very fine line here, and as I mentioned earlier, given where market positioning in European assets, there’s a lot of risks.”<\/p>\n
European stock futures were already pointing lower as global investors monitored U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest attempted intervention in the running of the Federal Reserve.<\/p>\n
Trump’s announcement on social media that he had fired\u00a0Federal Reserve<\/a>\u00a0Board Governor\u00a0Lisa Cook<\/a> drove Asia-Pacific markets<\/a> and U.S. futures<\/a> lower. Cook said in a Monday statement that Trump did not have the authority to remove her and that she “will not resign,” leaving a legal dispute a potential next step.<\/p>\n It follows months of pressure by Trump on the central bank to lower interest rates, including repeated criticism of and threats to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell<\/a>.<\/p>\n Markets rallied late last week after Powell gave a speech which spurred investors to price in a September rate cut by the Fed<\/a>.<\/p>\n In Europe, shares of German sportswear giant Puma<\/a> opened 2% lower following a 16% jump on Monday. The gains came after Bloomberg reported<\/a> that its majority shareholder, the billionaire Pinault family, was working with advisors with a view to a potential sale of the firm. Puma declined to comment when contacted by CNBC.<\/p>\n It’s a relatively quiet week on the data and earnings front, with a French consumer confidence reading out Tuesday before inflation figures from France, Germany, Italy and other European countries on Friday. Stateside, tech industry bellweather Nvidia<\/a> reports Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"European stock markets opened sharply lower on Tuesday, pulled down by French equities as traders monitored the potential…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[1050,28,122,20362,12,1051,101,594,72587,62238,6797,6801,71329,2938,18005,112,3487,29078,32739,880,1186,21],"class_list":["post-110772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-markets","tag-breaking-news-europe","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-cac-40-index","tag-donald-trump","tag-economic-events","tag-economy","tag-france","tag-francois-bayrou","tag-ftse-mib","tag-germany","tag-italy","tag-jde-peets-nv","tag-jerome-powell","tag-keurig-dr-pepper-inc","tag-markets","tag-nvidia-corp","tag-pernod-ricard-sa","tag-puma-se","tag-rhode-island","tag-stoxx-600","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Lisa](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/107433030-1719336500970-gettyimages-2097696791-POWELL_FED_LISTENS.jpeg\")
<\/a> Trump tells Fed’s Lisa Cook she’s fired; she says ‘he has no authority to do so’<\/a><\/p>\n