Turns Out France Has an Oligarch Problem Too
Proceeding now to Arnault’s role as oligarch: France will have a presidential election next year. At the funeral last month for former president Jacques Chirac’s widow (who Arnault had placed on LVMH’s board), three candidates walked to the front of the basilica, where Arnault was seated among the country’s past and present political elite, to pay homage. Arnault isn’t sure he likes any of them. In April he agreed to meet, for the first time in his life, the far-right candidate Marine LePen, who, like Trump, kicked off a presidential run with a felony conviction (in LePen’s case, for embezzling public funds, a ruling upheld earlier this month by an appeals court). Arnault told LePen that “On security and illegal immigration, you have real credibility, but on the economy, it feels like you’re close to” France’s political left in wanting to “over tax” businesses. Two of Arnault’s sons met recently with Jordan Bardella, president of LePen’s repellant National Rally party. This is a moment for France’s financial leaders to unite in opposition to incipient fascism. It didn’t happen in the United States in 2024, and it isn’t happening in France today.
Arnault wields remarkable influence over France’s current president, Emmanuel Macron. In 2020, Macron directed his finance minister to permit Arnault to renegotiate LVMH’s contract to purchase Tiffany, which had already been signed. Arnault felt he’d paid too much because after he agreed to a price Covid reduced Tiffanys’ sales. This was, Le Monde observes, a matter in which the government had no legitimate reason to interfere. In 2021, Macron appeared for the opening of a department store, something he’d never done before; it was LVMH’s Paris flagship, La Samaritaine. In 2024, Macron awarded Arnault the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest honor. “During Macron’s time in office,” writes Le Monde, “the Elysée has never refused anything for Arnault.”
The United States government, at least in the person of French Ambassador Charles Kushner (Trump-pardoned ex-con father to Jared) treats Arnault better than it treats Macron. Kushner has twice refused Macron summonses to the Elysée Palace, but he celebrated America’s semiquincentennial by throwing a party for Arnault, who Kushner calls not Monsieur but “Beurrernarte.” Arnault and Trump have been friends since the 1980s. In 2019, Arnault and his son Alexandre travelled with President Trump on Air Force One so they could attend the opening of a Louis Vuitton factory outside Dallas. “You are an artist and a visionary,” Trump said in his speech. Arnault got Trump to exempt LVMH’s champagnes from European tariffs; later, Louis Vuitton rented space from the Trump Organization in midtown Manhattan. Alas, Arnault had less luck in Trump’s second term fighting Trump’s 20 percent tariff on European imports, which cost LVMG tens of billions of euros.
