Kristof Van Gansen

I was born in France but grew up mostly in Switzerland and London, where I attended the Lycée Français. In 1969, a year after the student uprising, I enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris. It was an extraordinary time, but a frustrating one for a student who wanted to learn. Too many classes had become forums for political and ideological debates rather than places of academic instruction. After two years, I had enough. I dropped out, bought a one-way ticket to Brazil, and ended up staying for 15 years. I have watched France closely ever since. It remains one of the world’s most beautiful countries, with extraordinary talent, culture, scientific excellence and entrepreneurial creativity. I love France and always will. But over the decades, I have watched a country increasingly constrained by its own institutions. Layers of taxation, regulation, bureaucracy and permitting have made it harder to start businesses, take risks, create jobs and build wealth. Too much energy is devoted to protecting what exists rather than creating what comes next. The result is an economy that struggles to generate the growth and opportunities its people deserve, particularly its younger generations. Instead of looking forward, much of the national debate revolves around how to divide existing wealth rather than how to create more of it. This is not a question of left versus right. Governments of every political persuasion can fall into the same trap. It is about the cumulative effect of policies and institutions that, however well-intentioned, gradually discourage initiative and risk-taking. There is one statistic that I find particularly revealing. In 2025, approximately $320 billion of venture capital was invested in the United States, compared with about $8.4 billion in France. That’s nearly 40 times more in absolute dollars, almost 8 times more per capita, and 4 times more as a percentage of GDP. Venture capital is certainly not the only measure of innovation or economic vitality. But it is an important indicator of a society’s willingness to take risks, back entrepreneurs and invest in its future. America has built an extraordinary ecosystem for turning ideas into companies, companies into industries, and industries into jobs and prosperity. This is one of our greatest competitive advantages. But we should never assume that this advantage is permanent. Excessive regulation, poorly designed taxation, bureaucratic obstacles and political short-termism can gradually undermine the conditions that allow innovation and entrepreneurship to flourish. The damage doesn’t happen overnight. It accumulates over decades, until a country discovers that it has become much better at protecting the past than building the future. I worry about France because I love it. And I worry about America because I don’t want us to make the same mistakes. Prosperity is not something a country inherits forever. Every generation has to create it anew. Let’s not take America’s capacity to innovate, take risks and build for the future for granted.