Allow me to give a brief example of how bad things are in France compared to California. I just made a trip to Montpellier yesterday for a meeting with a potential client. The distance is about 300km (=200 miles) one way and can mostly be done on the Autoroutes, hence driving time was around 3 hours. This is quite a trip, but it is quicker than alternatives by train - especially given that the client's office is not in the middle of the city near the railway station - or plane (there are no direct flights from Nice to Montpellier so you have to travel via Paris!) and probably cheaper, however it is quite expensive compared to a similar journey in America because of the cost of petrol and the Autoroute tolls.
The tolls cost €19.90 one way €39.80 return. Petrol (diesel in this case) sells at around €1.10 per litre these days and the car we drove does about 7 l/100km which works out at about 42l for the round trip - actually I think it was a little better say 40l. Total costs were therefore almost €85.
Compare this with the USA today say someone in Montery, Ca wanting to visit a client in Sacramento. Petrol (gas) in the US is cheaper and people frequently drive less effiicent cars but 30mpg (US g) is quite common for this sort of motorway driving, which works out at some 13 gallons for the 400 mile round trip - assume we have something slightly more gas guzzling so it consumes 15 gallons. Petrol (gas) prices in California are around $3/gal so a 15 gallon trip costs $45 or €37 at today's exchange rate.
So the cost of an equivalent round trip in California is about €37, some 20% less than then price of fuel for the French trip even with our hypothetical American driving a less fuel efficient vehicle. The US interstates are (almost) all freeways not toll ways so the cost of the tolls is purely a French expense. But adding them in makes the cost of motoring in France well over double the equivalent cost in the USA, if the French trip was done using a less efficient petrol car as in the US version the additional cost (petrol costs 20% more than diesel in France and the fuel efficiency is less) would probably make it three times as expensive.
This has to significantly affect the French economy both directly in that it increases the cost of business and indirectly by making it less likely that businesses will seek clients in other parts of France. L'Escroc is on the ball here along with the rest of Vile Pin's cabinet in threatening the oil companies and insisting that they cut prices. The cabinet is also doing its best to suck up to the farmers and lorry drivers by promising various reductions in fees but not actually cutting the price of fuel. [One wonders whether HP's announcement that it is canning a quarter of its French workforce is related to the cost of transport or to other costs of doing business in France]