Bernard Arnault is Donald Trump's "best buddy" in Europe. The American president and the French billionaire have known each other for decades. Back in 2017, their relationship saved luxury goods giant LVMH from punitive tariffs. Will it stay that way?
When Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States in Washington on January 20, a small group of Frenchmen were also present. The founder of the luxury goods group LVMH Bernard Arnault, his wife Hélène Mercier-Arnault and two of his five children, Delphine and Alexandre Arnault, were given a place of honor under the dome of the Capitol. They were seated just two rows behind former American presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. A sign of extraordinary closeness.
"Who would turn down an invitation from the President to his inauguration?" asked Arnault a week later at LVMH's annual press conference at its Paris headquarters. He had known every American head of state since Ronald Reagan. He also has a long-standing relationship with Trump. "He was elected with an incredible majority," said Arnault.
Texan move
Eight years ago, on January 9, 2017, the French billionaire was the first foreign business leader to receive an audience at Trump Tower alongside Chinese Alibaba founder Jack Ma. Arnault took his then 24-year-old son Alexandre with him. Although he had warned him about Trump's quirk of forcibly pulling people towards him when shaking hands, Alexandre staggered forward when the president pulled his hand away in front of the television cameras.
Negotiations were then successfully held behind closed doors. That same year, Arnault opened a Louis Vuitton factory in Alvarado, Texas, which gave Trump the opportunity to present himself as a promoter of investment and jobs in the US. "What Bernard is doing is incredible, it's an honor to have him in Texas," he enthused.
Arnault, in turn, demonstrated a sense of Trump's need to reward loyalty with his expansion into Texas: The new LVMH production facility signaled that his company was ready to advance the president's "America first" agenda. As a result, luxury goods were miraculously spared when Washington imposed punitive tariffs on European goods in October 2019.
The import duties, which were a retaliatory measure for EU subsidies to Airbus, affected aircraft, cheese and alcoholic beverages such as wine and scotch, but not handbags, champagne and cognac.
But can Bernard Arnault still rely on the agreement today? So far, new tariffs, which Trump intends to use in his second presidency to punish the Europeans for allegedly unfair trade practices, have mainly affected steel and aluminum. On Tuesday, the list was expanded to include cars, medicines and semiconductors. Trump is taking the matter extremely personally: he called the EU's trade surplus in goods with the USA an "atrocity".
Arnault therefore seems to want to play it safe. Tariffs on his luxury brands (which include brands from fashion houses such as Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and Dior, drinks companies such as Moët Hennessy and jewelry manufacturers such as Hublot and Tiffany & Co.) would be a blow to his empire. Sales in China, LVMH's second-largest market, slumped by around 20 percent last year. The Group is therefore also relying on strong demand in the USA.
Trump likes to surround himself with billionaires like Arnault, who slipped from first to fifth place in the list of the world's richest people in 2024, but is still the richest European. The two men met in the early 1980s when Arnault temporarily fled France for New York after the socialist Mitterrand came to power. Back then, he dabbled in the real estate business, just like Trump. When he later turned to the luxury industry and took over American brands, he needed prestigious locations. This is where Trump's influence in the New York real estate world helped.
Solidarity with Trump
Close ties developed between the families of the businessmen: Alexandre Arnault became friends with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Delphine Arnault with Trump's daughter Ivanka. Meanwhile, the two Arnault children are considered to be his most promising successors: Alexandre was promoted to the strategic position of Deputy Director of Moët Hennessy in 2024, while 49-year-old Delphine is CEO of Christian Dior. The fashion choices of Ivanka and First Lady Melania Trump, who both wear Dior as a matter of course at important public appearances, also seem to underline the relationship.
In the summer of 2024, Bernard Arnault called Trump the day after he survived an assassination attempt. At the time, the Republican was in the midst of a bitter presidential election campaign and several criminal proceedings; the Frenchman could not have sent a stronger signal of loyalty. However, Arnault is also planning new investments in the USA, particularly at Tiffany & Co. The opening of further LVMH production sites is to be examined. And finally, the Frenchman has hired lobbyists in Washington to present his company as an innocent party in the trade conflict between the USA and the EU.
