Since 2003 the French trade balance has deteriorated substantially, due in particular to manufactured goods. In 2017 it reached its lowest level since 2011: a deficit of almost €60 billion for trade in goods, worsening by €6.7 billion compared to 2016 for trade in manufactured goods. The examination of the French trade balance provided here concentrates on manufactured goods and aims to break down this balance according to the items of demand. More precisely, it aims to reallocate to each of these items its content in terms of imports of manufactured goods. The latter may be used as intermediate consumptions or as final goods, for the purpose of meeting the domestic demand of the institutional sectors (households, enterprises, general government) or to serve foreign demand (exports).

A time series analysis of the manufacturing trade deficit shows that the import content of domestic demand is growing faster than manufacturing exports net of imports, in particular those used to produce them. The breakdown of the import content of domestic demand also shows different developments according to the institutional sectors: although corporate investment is more sensitive to the vagaries of the economic cycle, it contributed less to the widening trade deficit in manufacturing than household consumption or general government consumption. Finally, the manufacturing deficit also varies according to the sub-items considered: the balances of certain sectors like transport equipment are in surplus, whereas others show a considerable deficit due to limited production capacity in these sectors and brisk domestic demand.