Relations commerciales entre l'Espagne et la France

The present report contains a brief comparative analysis between Spain and France in relation to his commercial activity, which it includes principally the years after the financial crisis and his possible influence in the indexes and graphs of information obtained. Firstly this work focuses on the exports and imports of both countries following his historical path continuing with a more specific analysis relating both countries. Afterwards the car sector will be used as an example since is one of the most prominent in its international trade operations to do a more exhaustive examination on the comparative and absolute advantages between both countries. Finally using the information of the analysis we will come to a few conclusions to define a hypothetical opinion of how Spain should react in a near future.

Spain and France trade relationship

In economic terms, France and Spain have a very close relationship: more than a thousand French companies have been implanted in Spain that’s why France is the first commercial partner of the south bordering country. Becoming one of the principal commercial partners of the Gallic country which imports from it principally products of the car industry, intermediate goods and consumption goods, the exports are much more diversified apart from the car sector that represents almost a third part ; which is due to the evolution of concrete sectors, to the general conjuncture of the investment and the consumption in France.

As we said bellow more than 1.300 French companies are seated in Spain, especially the car sector (Renault, Peugeot …), of the retail (big distributors: Carrefour, Alcampo, Decathlon, Fnac …), food processing (Danone) and of the construction. They are placed especially in Madrid and Cataluña.

Between the 20 most important managerial Spanish groups there are 3 French groups that we have mentioned previously: Carrefour, Renault and Peugeot. Those have an important influence in the Spanish commerce.

The opportunities for French companies on the Spanish market place in such mature sectors as the chemistry, the logistics or the car, as well as in development sectors (biotechnologies, health, Tics, environment, renewable energies, aeronautics, or food-processing industry).

Spanish commercial trade

In the graph bellow we can observe that from the culminating point of the financial crisis where both the exports and the imports reflect a few minimal values but start mending. It is prominent as macroeconomic information that between 2012 and 2013 the exports managed to reach a historical peak concretely in March 2013 the Spanish economy obtained the first commercial surplus of its history.

In other words it means that for the first time since 1971 Spain sold more goods and services in a month than it bought.

Caused by a huge decrease of the internal investment and the consumption but a notable increase in the exports the balance of trade reached its first positive trade balance position.

French commercial trade

Following Germany, France is the second largest exporter and importer in Europe. Since 1995, the Hexagon has been a part of the World Trade Organisation. Much of France´s exports include a number of valuable commodities including machinery and transportation equipment, aircraft, plastics, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, iron steel, consumer products, petroleum and one of the most important; Cars, vehicles and their pieces.

A major part of its foreign trade is carried out with European partners including Germany, United Kingdom, Spain and Italy. France is also the world´s largest exporter in the world of both, services and farm products.

The manufacturing industry is a key exporter, making up nearly 27% of France´s GDP. France´s export growth has been aided by structural reforms initiated by the government that promote every aspect of foreign trade

Surprisingly in June 2013, France´s trade deficit narrowed to 4.44 billion €. The deficit decline was due to a sharp fall in imports which registered the weakest reading since December 2010. It´s a very similar situation that happened with the trade deficit of Spain in March 2013 we talked before.

Volume of Spanish imports

The table above represents the volume (in percentage) of Spanish imports with France compared to total Spanish imports.

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

% 12,34% 10,79% 10,82% 10,57% 11,26% 11,51%

In this graph we can see the representation of the Spanish imports to France in reference to the whole imports. During this period (2009-2014) the percentages are nearly the same, this means that the volume of imports of Spain hasn’t changed.

We can see that between 2010 and 2012, the percentage has slightly diminished; this could be because of the

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