The gilets jaunes’ protests in France have caused a pretty stunning volte face from President Emmanuel Macron, with more than 10 billion euros ($11.4 billion) of minimum wage and pension tax changes proposed this week. Alongside France’s already-announced reversal of a fuel tax rise, this could increase France’s deficit by as much as 0.6 percentage points to about 3.4 percent of gross domestic product. “Le spread” of 10-year French government bonds to German bunds has widened by 10 basis points in December, creating the biggest gap since Macron was elected in May 2017.
