You can see in the two right-hand side charts that the trade balances of the euro zone in general and of France in  Page 3 of 14 particular have fallen sharply since the end of 2021, with a cumulative deficit over 12 months for the euro area reaching almost 300 billion euros in September. While the bulk of this staggering fall is in energy, the situation is also deteriorating for non-energy goods. International trade, in purely accounting terms, is a zero-sum exercise and the deficits of some feed the surpluses of others. This transfer of wealth comes essentially from a change in the prices of traded goods as you can see in the bottom left chart for France that experienced a more rapid growth of its import deflator compared to its export deflator over the last 4 quarters. This “external tax” is a negative shock on the real income of both households and firms. Overall, this shock, along with the associated spike in inflation, is likely to have a sizeable negative impact on growth for several quarters at least. Let me now put forward quantitative measures of this external tax. It’s not that simple, and several ways of measuring it can be considered. We can look at a “gross” external tax, i.e. the amount of extra energy bill, for energy importing countries.
The Government  Page 14 of 14 has rightly planned the first steps for the beginning of 2023, with the planned 15% increases in gas and electricity tariffs and the end of the rebate on fuel prices, to be replaced by a fixed allocation of 100 euros targeted by income. ** Let me conclude: I believe it is normal that the public sector has stepped in in France and in other European countries in the face of this very significant economic pain. But let us be at the same time be honest with ourselves, use of medications must be temporary. The goal of public policy in the medium term must be, after a transition period, to grapple with the world as it is and to overcome challenges that are not about to disappear. In the end, we all have to share with fairness the “external tax”, and also pave the way to reduce our vulnerability by saving energy and by enhancing our domestic production of energy. France has in the past decade made significant progress in a number of areas, notably employment and training. In the present shock, too, I am confident that we can emerge collectively stronger. i  The macroeconomic impact of the terms of trade can be calculated as the difference between the [relative] growth rate of import and export deflators, weighted by the share of trade flows in nominal GDP.