France lowers growth outlook as trade war bites

PARIS (Reuters) - French Finance Minister Eric Lombard trimmed the government's 2025 growth forecast on Wednesday as a global trade war escalates, but said that the government aimed to stick to its deficit reduction plans.

The euro zone's second-biggest economy is now expected to grow only 0.7% instead of the 0.9% it had based its 2025 budget on, Lombard said on television channel TF1.

Despite the darker economic clouds, Lombard said that the government still aimed to reduce the public sector deficit this year to 5.4% of economic output from 5.8% last year though that would require squeezing extra savings from the budget.

(Reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten and Leigh Thomas)