President Donald Trump on Tuesday framed the mass student protests sweeping France as evidence of the country’s “out of control mass migration” and Islam, neither of which are consistent with protesters’ demands for better school conditions.

Fox News' Jeff Paul reports on escalating riots in France. Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez and New York Post columnist Miranda Devine discuss factors driving the unrest.

Chaos in schools, on the streets and in the markets is rooted in France’s struggles to fund its social welfare state, with a presidential election approaching.

A sell-off in French government bonds that spread into broader Eurozone markets this month has lured big investors to “bottom fish” among beaten-down assets including Italian bonds and corporate debt, on a bet that contagion fears are overdone.

Students are taking to the streets over underfunding in education as the government seeks to find budget cuts to appease bond markets.

Hundreds of thousands of French high school students have taken to the streets to protest against dilapidated buildings and teacher shortages.

Not only does it now cost France more to borrow than it does Italy and Greece; a rising number of big French companies enjoy lower market interest rates than does the French state. Of all the G7 nations, it has suffered most from the debt sell-off triggered by the Iran war.

Nearly €215 billion ($241 billion) of France’s corporate bonds now trade as if they were safer than the government’s, an almost 18-fold increase since the start of 2026, after a punishing sovereign debt selloff.