less sensitive to the price competition

Parisians challenge. Nostalgic onlookers, children delighted, politicians interested, come test the waters of Auvergne and the Salers cow sausage a fair time. Then return to their work of urban. Paris invited once a year, history to persuade campaign that, if the Earth is nothing, nothing beats the Earth. We all have a vital need of agriculture and, yet, farmers weigh more little in the economy.

Will be soon some of the industry The States General, which the President of the Republic today draws the main conclusions are fair. A all sense of the word: both the place for demonstrations and discussions. It. It proclaims high and strong the primacy of this economic activity on all the other necessary solidarity with workers, angry to see the plant shut down. It promises to reverse the trend... and then going to something else.

This is twenty-five years that the country look at starting its industries and not relies. Two million jobs lost in a share of gross domestic production from one quarter to one-sixth and thirty years. Most of these disappearances is manufacturing plants, with entire sectors almost removed from the map, such as making or machine. Today, less than 10 of the French workforce, less than 3 million people, worked in the manufacturing industry. After the post-harvest society of the 20th century, post-industrial society moved into the 21st. In France, it is already there.

It is obviously a problem for at least three objective reasons. First, industry exports more than the services and, therefore, contributes to improve the trade balance and to reduce foreign currency. Then, the industry is employment. If one combines direct jobs, those of the interim (recorded in the tertiary sector) and those services to the industry, it exceeds 5 million. They are more scattered in the territory and therefore contribute to its development. There is to see, say, the social ravages in Britain by decades of deindustrialization. Finally, the industry represents a know-how, sometimes high (aerospace, electronic, nuclear), which may be strategic. Complex and high level skills sometimes to make a difference in the competition. If Bic, Swatch and Lego, three European medium-sized companies, prefer manufacture internally, it is because their plants make them more competitive and more innovative.

Therefore, preserve the industry. However it disappears faster in France that among our neighbours, which means that we lose competitiveness. In other words, our products are too expensive for the quality they offer.

The remedies are known but difficult to apply because politically sensitive or painful. Release the initiative, both on the political, social, and financial plans; help SMEs, French against large groups, French force, weakness to encourage competition and innovation; Choose clear industrial sectors in which the France can defend his position in the competition and focus aid on it. In 2006, the firm McKinsey suggested a concentration of aid on the motor areas of innovation (aerospace, microelectronics, nuclear, pharmacy...) and mark (luxury, cosmetics, home equipment, or even food...), less sensitive to the price competition.

But all this arsenal is not enough. This will not change the long-term trend is that the industry, such as farming before her, continues to lose jobs and influence, under the effect of two inevitable trends.

The first of these is the race to productivity and automation that will not stop and that reduces the need for men. So an inevitable repositioning of the France on the top of range would lead to further accelerate outsourcing (to the bottom of range) and loss of jobs in the short term, as seen with the Germany 2006.

The second background trend is the evolution of consumption patterns towards less material goods and more services. As shown in a recent study by the Treasury on the deindustrialization, household services demand increases with the level of life and has exceeded two years the demand for industrial goods. When urban youth prefer to invest in video games, telephone or shows, or even a weekend in Berlin, rather than in the purchase of an automobile, it is their choice and that of an entire society that emerges.

In other words, it is becoming urgent to expand the reflection of the future of business. The producer and the dealer are merge. Already, in the distribution, change formulas mixed such as Ikea, Decathlon or Zara, who are designers and industrial need. In other cases, they are industrial which relieve of their plants to concentrate on the design and distribution. The great success of Apple is the most perfect illustration. Who deny that it contributes in its own way to the richness of America, like Google, Amazon or IBM, other post-industrial societies. The defence of the industry, such as agriculture should not be that of the past. But a new definition of the company.