Violent Rioting Sweeps France

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Luke Vargas (0:33)

Vladimir Putin proposes talks with President Trump and China's Xi to discuss ending the Ukraine War. Plus, France reels after cost of living protests spit out of control.

And Jamie Dimon shares what he's learned a year into a push to invest in companies that are critical to American national security.

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This is actual security resilience in drones and space and missiles and advanced manufacturing and farm and health care and grids and all the things that we all know we need. But the other side is skills and training in small businesses and vendors and other things we could do.

Luke Vargas (1:08)

It's Monday, October 19th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

French officials are holding emergency meetings this morning after a wave of rioting swept across the country over the weekend. With more on how cost of living protests in the country have spiraled out of control, sparking widespread rioting, vandalism, carjackings, and even arson, I'm joined by our Paris Bureau Chief, Stacy Meichtry. Stacy, we first had you on around two weeks ago. This is when France was preparing for mass demonstrations over school funding. Suffice it to say, other events have now subsumed that initial message, though not entirely, right? Retrace for us, if you could, the evolution of what's occurred here.

Stacy Meichtry (1:58)

So the movement began with high school students around Paris in the sort of poor Bonde-U, the outskirts of the city, who were upset about school conditions. And then this Saturday, it basically boiled over in the sense that a number of other protesters joined. These were protestors who were upset about the rise of cost of living. With all those people taking to the streets, police were stretched extremely thin doing crowd control, and thousands of other, let's call them rioters, began to do smash and grab operations at the margins of the protest, attacking everything from electronic stores to luxury boutiques. We saw a Louis Vuitton boutique basically get cleaned out. The rioters also did something that we usually don't see in these kinds of situations. Usually, town halls, city halls are considered off-limits, largely because they're regarded as almost like symbols of the republic, of civic identity. They're like the people's house. Well, this time around, we saw a number of city halls come under attack. There was one raided in Marseille. They basically ran the door in, they went in, they graffitied the lobby, and in Limoges, which is a town in Central France known for porcelain making. We saw rioters penetrate the building, set it on fire, and those flames basically ended up consuming the roof and its famous bell tower, which collapsed.

So the scenes were quite shocking. I mean, even by the standards of French protest, obviously France is a country with a history of violent protest, but the events of this weekend really stood out.

Luke Vargas (3:35)

Yeah, those photos from Limoges splashed across many front pages this morning around the world. I'm curious then how is the French state responding to this? Notably, I should say we've seen the French private sector appealing for help here, the head of supermarket chain, Carefour, saying the Republic must protect its retailers. I don't know how much affect that particular call to action is going to have, but what should we be looking for from Paris?

Stacy Meichtry (3:59)

Well, for starters, the government's hand is significantly constrained this time around.

President Emmanuel Macron has a history of dealing with crisis by essentially doing cash dumps in order to boost the purchasing power of the French public. Unfortunately, the French government is just in this fiscal mess where they're running deficits north of 5 percent. They're under pressure from markets to bring that down. They're not in any position to start doing handouts. That pretty much leaves security measures as the only real option to rein in the violence, and there again, the government has faced some real criticism. There was complaints that the government had been a bit heavy handed in their policing tactics. There were a number of sort of gruesome injuries that miners suffered. So there again, the government is going to have to sort of walk a tightrope in terms of if they decide to crack down, how severe is that crackdown going to be? You mentioned Carrefour, the police force just simply isn't big enough to position officers in front of every major retailer.