Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year will be invested in EU

https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1qjtvtl/macron_says_300_billion_in_european_savings_flown/

117•consumer451•1h ago

Comments

toomuchtodo•1h ago

https://streamable.com/m4dejv

tchalla•1h ago

Foor shure

Hamuko•49m ago

For those unaware of the context, there's a banger tweet: https://x.com/neilzegh/status/2013679440362975315

consumer451•1h ago

> Savings and investments union

https://finance.ec.europa.eu/regulation-and-supervision/savi...

nradov•1h ago

Macron is making up numbers. Unless the EU member states actually impose capital controls, investors will continue to send their capital wherever it can earn the highest returns. Profitable investment opportunities in the EU remain slim and so far they seem uninterested in pursuing a growth policy.

hnlmorg•1h ago

Maybe, but so does Trump. And that’s who these figures are really meant for.

I doubt it will make any difference though, because Trump is about as brain damaged as they come.

anovikov•1h ago

Indeed it sounds a lot like Trump's bs, so Trump might buy it. It's almost like "those s**hole countries sending is their worst to eat our cats and dogs" or "subsidies we send every year to all over the world".

neilwilson•1h ago

Except in a floating exchange rate that isn’t what happens. For somebody to leave the Eurozone for the Dollar zone there has to be somebody coming in the opposite direction to exchange with.

Macron is still talking nonsense of course. The Euros never left in the first place.

michaelt•6m ago

> For somebody to leave the Eurozone for the Dollar zone there has to be somebody coming in the opposite direction to exchange with.

Does that mean trade imbalances don’t exist?

the_mitsuhiko•1h ago

> Unless the EU member states actually impose capital controls, investors will continue to send their capital wherever it can earn the highest returns.

You don't need to introduce capital controls to make it unattractive to invest in the US. There are plenty of options that the EU could pull that would make investments abroad very unpopular quickly.

rwmj•1h ago

Those are capital controls by another name.

bryanrasmussen•43m ago

but not necessarily capital controls by a similar legislative difficulty, although at this point it's somewhat abstract what is being discussed.

baxtr•19m ago

Like how…?

the_mitsuhiko•14m ago

By taking inspiration from the US. The US has PFIC for instance and many other reporting requirements that make it more attractive to invest in the US than abroad.

nine_zeros•1h ago

> Macron is making up numbers

So is Trump. This is all just response to bullying.

"I got big muscles"

"Oh yeah, I got big muscles too"

This all is happening because America elected a criminal clown, twice.

godzillabrennus•44m ago

Let me fix that for you. This is all happening because the institutions in America failed to deliver for working-class people for over four decades, and Americans got fed up, elected a billionaire willing to be a bulldozer of those institutions and the systems that work for knowledge workers, twice.

hello_moto•28m ago

All politicians will say what people want to hear.

forty•25m ago

And how does that work for them?

throwawaypath•10m ago

Fantastic for my investment accounts!

wat10000•19m ago

American voters elected the people who ran those institutions, or appointed the leaders of those institutions.

I know we all want it to be some shadowy cabal so we can pretend the average person didn't cause this, but it isn't. We did this to ourselves.

bhouston•1h ago

Politics drives decision making in addition to just seeking returns, especially for government affiliated funds, e.g.:

https://www.reuters.com/business/swedish-pension-fund-alecta...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/danish-pension-fund-treasuries-...

(And remember that India and China combined reduced their holdings of US treasures by at least $50B in 2025: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/amid-global-... )

Canadian tourism visits to the US have dropped massively in the last year, not because Canadian tourist spots are better or more fun now (e.g. pure market forces), but again because of politics:

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20251211-where-are-all-th...

ilikehurdles•42m ago

Contrary to the implication, the Swedish fund that possibly sold $8b of its $100b worth of US Treasuries did not cite politics as its reason for doing so, and no part of the article backs up that claim. Additionally, selling out of the US dollar as the fed aimed to cut rates and as the dollar declined from historic highs against the Euro seems sensible regardless of politics.

Denmark has been exiting foreign bonds for 10 years, down from a high of $24b in 2016 to $10b in 2025. It’s not only part of a trend, but the cited $100m of bonds sold makes up a negligible 0.00026% of US treasuries.

On that note, 1 USD buys nearly $1.40 CAD.

Politics makes it easy to write stories that paint an incomplete or incorrect picture.

Muromec•36m ago

>Contrary to the implication, the Swedish fund that possibly sold $8b of its $100b worth of US Treasuries did not cite politics as its reason for doing so

Which doesn't mean it wasn't the reason.

ahartmetz•25m ago

Maybe it was more because the president is a fool and less because he is a jerk?

dmix•33m ago

To be fair, the Swedish pension fund specifically cited the US's "large budget deficits and growing government debt" for why they saw it as higher risk. That sort of thing is 100% politicians.

https://www.thestandard.com.hk/wealth-and-investment/article...

hello_moto•33m ago

> 1 USD buys nearly $1.40 CAD.

Right before Trump (2024), 1.42 CAD at the top. During Trump, barely hits 1.40 CAD, one time it touched 1.37 CAD.

torginus•5m ago

Yeah politics or not, the US stock market has a very high exposure to just a couple tech companies, and many of these companies have a very high P/E, and likewise hugely invested in AI (which itself is a risk). Add to that the recent (entirely self-inflicted) geopolitical questions of US reliability, I think it's a smart idea to reduce US exposure in one's portfolio.

Circling back to AI, my (not politically motivated) opinion, is that most of the tremendous supposed value was priced in into AI stock back in 2024, with 2025 gains being either relatively modest or stagnant. With the risks involved, I think it's fair to expect that AI companies can go down a lot, but it's hard to imagine them going up by that much.

Like, for example if NVIDIA gained another $1T in market cap, that'd increase the stock price by 22%, but if they lost that much, it would make it go down by 36%. If we consider both outcomes equally likely (not suggesting this is a reasonable assumption), we're more likely to lose money.

graemep•41m ago

How much do EU government run funds invest in the US?

dmix•37m ago

The EU has $8T invested in US assets. That's not an easy choice like a soccer mom choosing to go to the Caribbean instead of Florida for a weekend. It's very serious business that needs real alternatives.

jacquesm•30m ago

As long as they lose less than they lose by keeping it in $ they're coming out ahead.

TacticalCoder•1h ago

And Macron is running a country with a gigantic primary deficit in a country that already has a huge public debt.

Overall they're running a deficit at 5.8% of their GDP. And they of course missed their target of 5.4% (which is already gigantic) in 2025.

Public spending represents 60% of the GDP.

In other words: France is totally fucked, merde!

The only reason the IMF hasn't taken the reins of France yet is because France has the nuclear weapon and is the only country in the eurozone to have it, so they have some leverage with the other countries in the eurozone.

So Macron would be wise to concentrate on fixing the insane public spendings of France which brings nothing else but debt, misery, and third-worldness to France.

lejalv•54m ago

meanwhile 6-week vacations, high speed trains, walkable cities, generous child benefits, and, well, quality of life salute you from here

petcat•46m ago

All great things for sure. But the French economy has been stagnant for decades. There is no growth. One option would be to allow more immigration, but not allow the immigrants to have access to the public benefits. Obviously that is a divisive political issue they struggle badly with.

VWWHFSfQ•34m ago

> the French economy has been stagnant for decades. There is no growth.

This is one of the biggest reasons why it is trivially easy for USA, China, and Russia to squeeze them (and the whole EU) from all sides.

ifwinterco•38m ago

The issue is a lot of French people in the private sector (small businesses, contractors etc.) actually work really hard and often long hours to subsidise public sector employees barely working and retiring at 55.

At the end of the day, that just isn't sustainable politically and it's pretty questionable if it's morally correct either

paganel•35m ago

At some point the money runs out for all of that stuff, it seems that in France that's just about to happen.

withinboredom•48m ago

One thing I remember from civics class: governments should think in terms of generations; not profits/losses.

thatguy0900•39m ago

That's true, but you have to actually be investing in growth for it to come up. Instead the next generation will get both spiriling interest payments and crumbling infrastructure.

embedding-shape•48m ago

> The only reason the IMF hasn't taken the reins of France yet is because France has the nuclear weapon and is the only country in the eurozone to have it, so they have some leverage with the other countries in the eurozone.

Haha, what? How is France having nuclear weapons leverage over other countries in the Eurozone? What kind of thing do you think the Eurozone or EU even is? We don't use threats of violence against each other in negotiations. France having nuclear weapons or not matters zilch in these conversations, because we're all allies.

direwolf20•47m ago

Well they're right: The IMF routinely takes over countries that have too much debt, but it hasn't done this to France.

wat10000•15m ago

Which ones?

shmeeed•11m ago

The IMF usually only gets involved in policy when countries borrow money from them. So far, France has not had to request such aid.

thatguy0900•35m ago

I took it to mean more that europe relies on France for nuclear deterrence against outside threats so treats them with gentle gloves more than Europe is afraid of France nuking them. Right now more than ever they really need someone with nukes on their side.

embedding-shape•19m ago

> I took it to mean more that europe relies on France for nuclear deterrence against outside threats

Yeah, that tracks, re-reading with that interpretation makes it make a whole lot more sense than what I understood at first reading. Thanks a lot for helping me understanding it better!

charamis•14m ago

> Haha, what? How is France having nuclear weapons leverage over other countries in the Eurozone? What kind of thing do you think the Eurozone or EU even is? We don't use threats of violence against each other in negotiations. France having nuclear weapons or not matters zilch in these conversations, because we're all allies.

Greece says hello!

embedding-shape•11m ago

... did I miss something? I know there is plenty of financial and institutional coercion, don't get me wrong, but violent threats between nations within the Eurozone? When did that happen / what are you referencing?

triceratops•10m ago

> How is France having nuclear weapons leverage over other countries in the Eurozone?

If there's one thing a bank is scared of, it's getting nuked. /s

savant2•47m ago

How many percentage of GDP is healthcare in the US? 10, 20%?

Healthcare is almost entirely public in France (pension also mostly are), so I'm not sure that your comparison makes sense.

dmix•30m ago

Healthcare is about 17% in the US GDP and 30% of the federal budget. The US spends more on public healthcare as a % of GDP than almost all European countries, including France which spends about 12% of GDP on healthcare.

cayleyh•30m ago

It's hard to get a comparable read since you don't get a clean split in the #s between what would be public spending vs. private spending if the US + a "Medicare for All" type system, but including the % of GDP spent in US on healthcare overall, it would put government expenditures as % of GDP on par with most other countries in the world that do provide universal health care:

* https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/... * https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

France certainly has a higher % of expenditure to GDP than other comparable countries, and you would expect the USA health care to GDP % to decline to be more inline with other countries with universal coverage if a national program was introduced.

However, because France is still offering more public social services and benefits overall vs. a "USA + universal health" that it's hard to make broad claims either way about who is wasting more money or which system is more effective for citizens based purely on % of government expenditure to total GDP.

soperj•30m ago

Isn't the US running a deficit of 5.8% of their GDP as well?

victorbjorklund•12m ago

First of all IMF has nothing to do with the Eurozone. And second of all, we are Europeans. We don’t threaten to bomb our neighbors if they don’t give us what we want. That’s just a Russian/American thing.

gogopromptless•59m ago

Counter argument: people invest in bonds. Quite a lot of bonds in fact.

Picking up pennies in front of a steam roller and counterparty risk seem to be perennial favorites of youth, but I hazard to guess only a minority in the market have flesh yet untouched by fire.

abirch•59m ago

Unfortunately the US Dollar is devaluing. In the past year the dollar went down by 11%. That means SP 500 which has gone up 13% in the past year has only gone up 2% for a European.

f1shy•52m ago

The fact that the EUR/U$S parity did not change much means EUR devaluated about the same, doesn’t it?

chairmansteve•44m ago

No the $ devalued against the euro by about 11% in the past 12 months. Look at a chart.

nullhole•41m ago

EUR/USD increased ~13% in the past year

https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=EUR&to=USD&view=1Y

victorbjorklund•16m ago

False. Dollar has crashed against Euro.

everybodyknows•18m ago

The DXY dollar index:

https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/.DXY?qsearchterm=dollar%20index

The big move down happened March-June.

skybrian•11m ago

This means that from a European point of view, US investments are 11% cheaper.

This could be attractive depending on your view of the future of the US dollar and US stock market.

realusername•5m ago

Well no thanks, the US is going the same way path Hungary and Turkey, autocrats are never good for business.

As soon as Trump came in power I sold all my dollars and I was wise to do it

kmac_•52m ago

No idea what this number actually is. If it includes pension funds' investments in the US stock market and US bonds, then it is underestimated.

thomassmith65•7m ago

It would be spectacularly pointless and stupid for the President of France to just pull a $300B figure out of his ass in a speech to the World Economic Forum.

abirch•1h ago

When will the EU understand that they have the GOAT Paul Graham across the channel? Capital would flow to him.

g-mork•1h ago

drop capital gains tax on EU stonks and watch the flight. there are a million ways they could make this attractive

unmole•54m ago

> drop capital gains tax on EU stonks

Right, because it's not like France already has a large primary deficit or anything.

withinboredom•46m ago

If you are rich enough, it isn’t rocket science to avoid capital gains taxes in the EU. And by rich enough, just a few hundred K. (See the related FIRE Reddit boards)

Muromec•28m ago

confused sounds in voiced glottal fricative What capital gains tax?

victorbjorklund•5m ago

In general those things work pretty bad. Then someone will just make an EU company that owns US shares to do a tax arbitrage.

tchalla•1h ago

The EU can’t even get a Mercosur deal closed after 30 years. I think this will probably happen in another 60 years.

f1shy•46m ago

What makes it more ridiculous, is that fact that we from the EU are shouting US is getting isolated, but some of the biggest economies in the world do not want to trade with 4 countries from the 3rd world, because we think will get bankrupt because of that.

paganel•32m ago

It's because of agriculture and us here in Europe losing our food-related resilience because of that. The tertiary sector won't save you in case of a continental blockade and the Argentinian/Brazilian grain suddenly becoming unavailable. "We'll go back to our farmers here in Europe!" Oops, you've just pushed them into bankruptcy a few years ago as a result of Mercosur, so good luck with that.

direwolf20•28m ago

What happens to bankrupt farms? Are they converted into national forests?

f1shy•9m ago

The amount of erosion and heavy use of fertilizer doesn’t seem so good in the long run.

unglaublich•29m ago

*We = farmers, their lobby, and their simps.

forty•20m ago

I'm sure everyone would be happy to purchase stuff that respect our own standards. We forbid our farmers to use some chemicals because they are bad for health and nature, it would be completely stupid to start purchasing food abroad that is made using those chemicals, don't you agree?

f1shy•9m ago

Sorry, the standards imposed to meat from south america is way higher than the European. Wine is nearly impossible. And spicies like paprika also require higher standards than in Europe. I don’t know what you mean with that. Free trade doea not mean there are no standards to meet. Also in south america, because of size you don’t need nearly as much chemicals as in EU anyway.

victorbjorklund•6m ago

I thought Americans today are pro-tariffs and against free trade? US is still unable to get a free trade deal with mercosur.

charles_f•57m ago

If like me you are wondering why the sunglasses, it looks like he is using that to mask an eye infection.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-emman...

pupppet•41m ago

Probably just a broken blood vessel in the eye.

jll29•9m ago

There once was a lady in France,

Whose right fist struck as if by chance;

  Her husband, called M...on,

  Said his eyesight was gone,

“Just an eye infection, come on!”

Havoc•56m ago

TIL EU savings rate is far more than US. 18.79% vs 3.50%

Guessing that's somehow counting enforced deductions off paycheques. Would be a wild difference if not.

https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/personal-savings

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-savings

Hamuko•54m ago

This doesn't surprise me at all as an European. My mind struggles to understand how so many Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

seszett•48m ago

There's no "enforced savings" that I know of in Europe.

3.50% in the US sounds extremely low to me. It has fallen a bit recently but the savings rate was about 25% in France in 2020. Common knowledge says to strive to save at the very least 10% of one's revenue around here.

Hamuko•40m ago

According to some sources, 1 in 4 Americans don't/can't save at all.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/13/economy/job-prices-debt-e...

thatguy0900•33m ago

There is a very large and growing portion of the US that maintains no savings at all. In fact it's the opposite and many are slowly spending their way into perpetual credit card debt.

direwolf20•27m ago

It's essential to the way the system works. One person's money is another person's debt. Normally the government would take on enough debt to ensure everyone had money, but the USA is a weird case.

Epa095•25m ago

It seems like savings include pension ([1], but it is a bit unclear to me) , and that is a kind of forced saving (as in many places in Europe you can't choose to not get pension and get it as cash to spend instead).

1: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

victorbjorklund•8m ago

Sounds like they don’t count that. They seem to only count disposable income and payments the company does to your retirement aren’t really disposable

mkjs•19m ago

The UK has "enforced savings" in the form of auto-enrollment pensions for over 10 years. Looks like Ireland is just starting to do it too.

swarnie•16m ago

That's mostly to prepare teenagers at the time for having no state pension in 50 years.

I have about seven of the buggers and I'm only in my mid 30s.....

mrtksn•45m ago

Even the poorest EU countries are actually surprisingly wealthy.

Bulgaria was switching to Euro on the new year’s eve and the easiest way to convert Leva to Euro was to put the money into the bank, so Bulgarians deposited 100B+ levas into personal accounts by November which converts to ~50B+ Euros. Which is over 10K Euros per Bulgarian adult. Not bad for the poorest country, considering that home ownership rate is also very high(%86 IIRC).

The life is pretty good for a GDP per capita of $18K.

direwolf20•43m ago

The US can always print more money to fund its institutions, but other countries have to save theirs. Sure, they can print more euro but when so much stuff they need is traded in USD, that's not nearly as effective as when the US prints more USD.

jacquesm•24m ago

> The US can always print more money to fund its institutions, but other countries have to save theirs.

That only works if there are takers for US bonds otherwise all this will do is devalue the USD.

jochem9•38m ago

In the US people take on personal debt for something like a car. In the Netherlands (where I live) this is very uncommon: people save up, then buy it.

thatguy0900•31m ago

Our public transportation infrastructure is so badly managed that many jobs will ask you if you have reliable transportation and fire you if you find yourself without it. If your car breaks here it's often not really a option to save up for a bit first.

microtonal•23m ago

Also helps that most people don't start with an extremely large student loan when they have finished their education.

coffeebeqn•18m ago

Retirement accounts are more like social security than 401k. There’s no set amount of euros set aside for me it’s all in the pool paying for older peoples retirement

skybrian•7m ago

And yet there's no lack of demand for US investments, because they're also attractive to foreign investors. (This is the flip side of trade deficits.)

I wonder how much of EU savings is invested in foreign countries?

pantalaimon•51m ago

So no more MSCI World in Europe?

ChrisArchitect•51m ago

Please update the link to https://streamable.com/m4dejv or the transcript of the entire speech https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-a...

lysace•50m ago

Love that MEGA acronym someone dropped in the comments. I need a blue hat with a golden MEGA lettering embroided.

paganel•37m ago

So, how is this going to work? Is he talking about the French Ministry of Economics and Finance? About the Banque de France? About the the ECB? Afaik the last two are, nominally at least, independent, while Macron is just a politician representing one of the 27 EU countries, so what authority does he have? What do the political leaders of Latvia think about this? Or of Malta?

littlecranky67•28m ago

Funny that of all people, Macron says that. Just a few months back, France government bonds lost their AAA rating because Macron refuses to pass legislative reforms. All while the EU biggest powerhouse economy - Germany - has remained stagnant or is even shrinking. Good luck convincing investors to not buy US bonds with that outlook.

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