PARIS — Au revoir, America. Bonjour, tristesse, France. If that’s overstated, it’s not by over-much.
Right here in April, within the month and the place of falling rain and falling in love, I discovered that the rain had not a lot modified — however the “love” half had.
If my random and unscientific survey of some French opinion in any respect represents the nation’s as an entire, then the debut of Donald Trump’s America has left some French triste — a bit unhappy, even brokenhearted, and in addition cautious and vigilant.
That was in line with brutal ballot findings from a month earlier than, by the analysis agency Institut Elabe for the French broadcaster BFMTV. About 3 in 4 French folks consider that the USA is not an ally of their nation.
Virtually as many French residents, having seen the way in which Trump and his vice chairman, JD Vance, manhandled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky within the Oval Workplace, are afraid that Russia’s battle in opposition to Ukraine will spill over past Ukraine’s borders, maybe even into France itself.
They have been additionally listening to Vance’s dismissive remarks about Europe on that infamous Sign chat earlier than the U.S. strikes in opposition to Houthis in Yemen, that “I simply hate bailing Europe out once more,” and Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth’s all-caps characterization of Europe as “PATHETIC.”
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They usually have been repelled by the U.S. Embassy’s high-handed letter in March, addressed to French firms and telling them that in the event that they wish to do enterprise with the U.S. authorities, they should play by Trump guidelines prohibiting DEI practices, and requested that they return, inside 5 days, a type certifying that they have been.
So I went about Paris and requested some folks, strangers in addition to a couple of French pals, what they considered this new “America,” only some months previous, and the way their attitudes towards this nation might need modified.
Most didn’t need their surnames used — and you’ll hardly blame them.
How sorrowful that it has come to this parting of how, 140 years after the French introduced us with that beautiful monument to our shared spirit, the determine who lifts her lamp over Liberty Island.
Souville, who’s 24 and a pupil, sat within the skinny solar outdoors the Picasso Museum, and informed me {that a} pal of hers, a fellow pupil, had taken a short-term, above-board job as a nanny in Utah. She flew first to Boston, the place Souville mentioned ICE detained her, went via her social media accounts and noticed some anti-Trump postings, and denied her entry into the nation.
“They’ve created concern. I really feel that [Trump’s] authorities has created a response that’s simply surreal. The U.S. is so huge and influential on the earth — additionally, I’m afraid France will comply with the instance of Trump: racist, anti-immigrant.”
Protesters maintain posters in opposition to Elon Musk, left, and President Donald Trump through the Could Day demonstration, Thursday, Could 1, 2025 in Paris.
(Thibault Camus / Related Press)
Bernard was on the identical museum. He’s 71, from a city close to Bordeaux, and was in Paris visiting his daughter.
“It’s a betrayal,” he mentioned flat out, a betrayal of the U.S. and its values, even earlier than the betrayal of allies and pals. “I ask myself how a folks can elect him twice. He has a imaginative and prescient of navy energy and he sees nothing besides what advantages him. MAGA, MAGA — utterly narcissistic.”
“It’s greater than a disappointment. It’s stronger — a nightmare. The U.S. represented liberty, and now Trump helps Putin, and what occurs now? … I’ve at all times had religion within the American folks, a rustic I love, however to see what has occurred, it makes you unhappy. I feel the folks in the USA received’t stand for this [national] suicide.”
America wouldn’t be the USA had it not been for France. The American Revolution was a possibility for still-royalist France to trigger hassle for the despised British, and the cash and navy manpower of France made the essential distinction.
It’s not one thing many Individuals know (and one thing picture manipulators select to disregard) however the French haven’t forgotten. Annually, round July 4, the French perform a dignified ritual to vary the American flag on the tomb of the Marquis de Lafayette within the Picpus Historic Cemetery.
Tombstone of Basic Marquis Lafayette and his spouse, Picpus Historic Cemetery, Paris, exhibits an American Flag re: Revolutionary Warfare.
(Joe Sohm / Common Photographs Group through Getty Photographs)
However the French nobleman had greater than a strategic love for this future nation. He admired the Individuals’ battle for independence, befriended George Washington, and got here to command Continental troops on the decisive battle of Yorktown. Right here in Paris, he’s technically buried on American soil: earth from the Battle of Bunker Hill.
It was to this grave that, on July 4, 1917, an American colonel, Charles Stanton, marching with troops arriving to hitch the French in World Warfare I, spoke feelingly of the 2 nations’ lengthy alliances, and of America’s debt:
“The actual fact can’t be forgotten that your nation was our pal when America was struggling for existence, when a handful of courageous and patriotic folks have been decided to uphold the rights their Creator gave them — that France within the individual of Lafayette got here to our help in phrases and deed. It will be ingratitude to not keep in mind this, and America defaults no obligations.” He ended with a declaration, “Lafayette, we’re right here.”
So that’s when the lengthy alliance started — typically strained however by no means solely ruptured.
Up to now.
I barged in on Romane and Justine, 20-something ladies having a late lunch at a sidewalk desk within the third arrondissement. For Romane, as for a lot of Europeans who’ve dreamed of touring America, “Proper now, I don’t wish to go to the U.S. Earlier than, I needed to go to New York all my life. Not now.”
And Trump’s hostility towards Ukraine makes her uneasy; “I don’t perceive how he takes a place allied with Russia. And his positions about ladies, about [human] rights …”
Justine, a Black girl, picked up the thread. “Rights for girls are in peril within the U.S. It’s not right here but, however Trump, he’s a mannequin for therefore many. I by no means needed to go there, as a result of the historical past isn’t one which I love, what they did to Native Individuals. And I wouldn’t wish to go there as a result of I’m afraid of the racism. The lifetime of Black folks is tough, and he’s making it worse. I really feel like [Americans] are shedding the beliefs of justice and humanity.”
Other than sentiments like these are {dollars} and cents. Worldwide tourism brings greater than $2 trillion a 12 months into the U.S. — till now. Tourism execs are unnerved that within the already wobbly economic system, summer season journey bookings from France are down barely.
A demonstrator holds an indication with “Battle Trump Oligarchy, Save American Democracy” written on it throughout a gathering in opposition to President Trump’s insurance policies in Lyon, France, on April 5, 2025.
(Matthieu Delaty / Getty Photographs)
A pal of mine arrange a lunch with me and his pal Olivier Desgeorges, who simply retired as an engineer within the French ministry of ecology, and he was by no means reluctant to say his piece:
“With all of the modifications — Brexit, the prospect of battle with China — every little thing is altering all over the place, however [Trump] appears like a betrayal. France by no means thought the U.S. may deal with us as an enemy.”
Like a couple of folks I spoke to, he alluded to the long-ago warning from Charles de Gaulle, the legendary French president and wartime basic. “Europe was castrated after the battle. It developed an economic system, however not energy, not may. So the implications are younger Europeans right here have [an] thought of Europe as a straightforward paradise: the economic system shouldn’t be so good however we now have good meals, have chocolate — 70 years of peace is phenomenal, however they don’t notice it.”
Europeans “are educated sufficient to make distinction between Trump and Individuals. They simply don’t perceive the stupidity. They usually assume it’s going to be the collapse of the may of America. The respect America had, and the negotiating energy, are diminished.”
Europe will react accordingly: “That civic nationalism we regarded as unhealthy goes to come back again,” he mentioned.
I left Desgeorges after lunch and headed to the Jardin des Plantes, website of the town’s pure historical past museum and, at that second, an immense bloom of spring flowers.
There, sitting on a bench going through the solar and studying a newspaper, as he does on each nice day, was Ingo, initially from Berlin, who taught college programs in European legislation within the U.S. for a number of years.
So he is aware of the nation effectively, and analyzes inner political nuances as adroitly as a CNN speaking head. The GOP, he says, has develop into “an instrument of its personal destruction.”
“Trump says what he needs and the world is at his toes. If inflation goes up and the GDP declines, then Individuals received’t need the Republican Occasion, and received’t permit Trump to brazenly violate the Structure for a 3rd time period.”
Regardless of his many pals and colleagues within the U.S., he received’t go to anymore, due to Trump. And he is aware of French pals who’ve lived for years within the U.S. who at the moment are promoting their properties there and returning to France, partially from the concern and uncertainty about what may occur to them.
As for the consequence of Trumpism on this facet of the Atlantic, he mentioned that reasserting a post-American French and European authority is “troublesome. We depend on U.S. navy tools that may take Europe 10 years to be impartial of the U.S. De Gaulle mentioned within the Nineteen Sixties that France can’t be submissive to the U.S., that it has to develop its personal nuclear energy, its personal political energy, that the French wanted to see themselves as a part of an amazing nation, and shouldn’t depend on others for his or her nationwide safety and prosperity.”
The following day was chilly, and I dropped in for a lunch of do-it-yourself vegetable soup, pears and cheese with some previous pals, Joshua and Rene. Joshua has lived right here for greater than 40 years, and continues to be a U.S. citizen. He will get “largely commiseration and sympathy” from French pals who perceive the excellence between the American public and Trump, however are “bewildered by plenty of what is occurring within the States now.”
Rene is 87, and clearly remembers August 1944, when his mom took him into the streets and lifted him up in her arms, among the many crowds of Parisians, so he may see the 6-feet-5-inch-tall De Gaulle march into the town after it had been liberated by the Allies.
So Rene, for his half, has an extended reminiscence of strains and ruptures in U.S.-French relationship, just like the indignant Nineteen Sixties French protests in opposition to the U.S. position in Vietnam, which the French colonial forces had misplaced in 1954. The “America go house” protest indicators acquired plenty of use again then, he recollects — and who is aware of, maybe they’ll be placing in an look once more.
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