🇫🇷🇺🇸 American Independence: What If France Presented Its Bill to Donald Trump Too?
Donald Trump claims, in a message aimed at his MAGA electoral base, that Europeans should reimburse the United States for the weapons and ammunition delivered to Ukraine during Joe Biden’s presidency. He refers to “hundreds of billions of dollars” without specifying the exact amount being demanded, the countries concerned, or the legal mechanism envisaged.
Since Washington appears to want to apply the principle that “you should have paid” retroactively, France could, in the same spirit, retrieve its archives from 1778.
Amount of the fictitious bill, including interest: approximately 290 billion billion dollars.
Yes, 2.9 × 10²⁰ dollars.
The demonstration below recalls an all-too-often forgotten historical reality: without French military and financial intervention, American independence would probably have followed a very different path.
📜 1778: when France chose America
On February 6, 1778, France signed a Treaty of Alliance and a Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the young United States. In doing so, it officially recognized the new nation and entered the war against Great Britain.
Louis XVI did not merely send a message of support. France provided loans, weapons, ammunition, uniforms, soldiers, and substantial naval assistance. Approximately 6,000 men were placed under Rochambeau’s command.
In 1781, Admiral de Grasse took control of Chesapeake Bay while Rochambeau marched with Washington’s forces toward Yorktown. Cornwallis’s British army found itself surrounded before surrendering on October 19.
French assistance was therefore decisive in the American victory at Yorktown and in the United States gaining its independence.
💰 What France actually spent
Historical estimates vary depending on whether they include only the aid provided directly to the insurgents or France’s entire war effort against Great Britain.
This notably included:
- Loans and grants provided to American representatives
- Weapons, equipment, and military supplies
- The expeditionary force commanded by Rochambeau
- Naval operations conducted in the Atlantic and the Caribbean
- The Chesapeake campaign and the Siege of Yorktown
- More broadly, the financing of the Anglo-French War between 1778 and 1783
The total cost of the French intervention is generally estimated at approximately 1.3 billion livres tournois. This expenditure, largely financed through borrowing, contributed to worsening the crisis in the royal finances on the eve of the French Revolution.
🧾 The bill to present to Donald Trump
To follow the retroactive accounting logic proposed by Donald Trump, let us therefore use a principal amount of 1.3 billion livres tournois.
Then let us add, in a deliberately absurd manner, a compound annual penalty of 10% over 248 years, from 1778 to 2026:
The multiplier would then exceed 18 billion.
After an equally theoretical conversion into today’s currency, the bill could be presented as follows:
🇫🇷 Total claimed by France: approximately 270 billion billion euros
🇺🇸 Equivalent: approximately 290 billion billion dollars
A considerable amount, far beyond any figure with meaningful economic significance today.
⚠️ Satire, not a debt claim
Contrary to a persistent myth, the United States did not simply “forget” to repay its loans to France.
The loans granted during the American War of Independence were progressively repaid or refinanced. In 1795, American banker James Swan took over the remaining balance of the French debt, ending France’s direct claim against the United States government.
Nevertheless, this bill highlights the absurdity of a form of diplomacy in which alliances are reinterpreted, decades or even centuries later, as simple commercial services that can be invoiced retroactively.
🇪🇺 Europe is not starting from zero
The claim that Europeans paid nothing to support Ukraine also deserves to be put into perspective. Between 2022 and March 2026, the European Union, European NATO members, and their partners committed approximately 130 billion dollars in military aid to Ukraine.
Since 2025, the PURL mechanism has also enabled NATO allies to directly finance purchases of American weapons intended for Kyiv. By June 2026, approximately 6.3 billion dollars had been pledged through this mechanism, of which 4.8 billion had already been received by the US Treasury.
The history of alliances cannot be reduced to a simple bill, as Donald Trump seems to forget in an entirely simplistic manner.
But if Washington nevertheless wishes to reopen the accounts of the past, Versailles still has a few archives.
Sources: Office of the Historian of the US Department of State, Congressional Research Service, Palace of Versailles, US Army, Reuters, Politico.
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