Le commerce extérieur français à la dérive ?

This paper deals with recent developments in foreign trade and notably with the fall of the French market shares. We first describe the deterioration of the French external trade since the beginning of the 2000?s. We show that within the euro zone, Germany is the exception rather than France, and that the difference between both countries cannot be explained by geographical or sector specialization. We analyse then different competitiveness indicators. We show that French companies succeed in containing prices by reducing margins, and that classic modelling using price-competitiveness does not manage to explain market share deterioration. Finally, we extend the standard model with nonprice competitiveness, supply indicators, and we introduce an indicator of world trade openness to take into account the emergence of new actors in world trade. JEL classification: F140, F170.