We live in a country that long ago decided private investments are better than government investments, they maybe. However, the government’s role is support or infrastructure and private investment is to make money from the government investments. It is something most of us take for granted, but not every country operates in that fashion.

In an article by Joe McDonald of the Associated Press, in late July, the French Finance Minister said he pressed Chinese leaders to open their markets wider to foreign investment and encouraged China to invest in France’s electric car industry. France’s Finance Minister is Bruno Le Maire and he met with Vice-Premier He Lifeng.

Similar to other countries around the world, many manufacturing countries left their home base to operate from China. Now the same countries are faced with trade deficits and they would like the deficit to narrow. One method is to export more products to China.

China and France agreed to co-operate on climate change, financing for developing countries and nuclear power. One of France’s biggest exports is cosmetics and the countries agreed to a trade dispute mechanism.

One of the biggest electric vehicle (EV) is China’s BYD. Their cars sell in France and the country France wants BYD the world’s largest producer of EVs to produce them in France because BYD is selling the cars in Europe. CATL a battery supplier has set up a factory in Europe to supply BMW.

France has restrictions on foreign investments by chip producer Ommic because French counterespionage officials believe a Chinese investor who bought Ommic in 2018 was trying to transfer chip manufacturing technology to China. France wishes to protect its key technologies.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, one of the roles of government is to open doors of other countries, some countries are much more open about it than others. The government typically offers assistance to private companies and they expect the assistance in both good and bad economic cycles. In the US, we often see companies only wanting assistance in the bad economic cycles. The economic model is slightly different depending on the country, if the companies you have investment in operate outside the US, expect to see greater co-operation with the governments they operate in.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.