Trichet was born in 1942 in Lyons, the son of a professor of Greek and Latin. He was educated at the École des Mines de Nancy, from which he graduated in 1964. He later earned a master’s degree in economics from the University of Paris and then trained at the Institut d’études politiques de Paris (best known as Sciences Po), finishing in 1966, and the École nationale d’administration (ENA) from 1969–1971, two French higher education institutions in the field of political science and state administration.

From 1987, Trichet served as head of the Trésor public. In this capacity, he also chaired the Paris Club of creditor nations in the mid-1980s and was closely involved in debt problems that struck Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. He also became a member of Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty. Soon after taking office at Trésor, Trichet oversaw the change to an anti-inflationary franc fort (strong franc) policy, to pave the way for currency union with Germany. In 1993, he led Trésor’s move to grant the Bank of France independence to set its own interest rates.

In 1993, Trichet was appointed governor of Banque de France. Both as director of the French Treasury and then governor of the Banque de France, he was widely seen one of the architects of the European monetary union.

By 1997, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and President Jacques Chirac proposed Trichet as France’s candidate for the position as president of the European Central Bank; this way they opposed Wim Duisenberg, the candidate preferred by the majority of the Eurozone members. Under a compromise laid out by German Finance Minister Theo Waigel, Duisenberg would resign midway through his eight-year term to make way for Trichet. On 1 November 2003 he succeeded Wim Duisenberg.

In January 2003, Trichet was put on trial with eight others charged with irregularities at Crédit Lyonnais, one of France’s biggest banks. Trichet was in charge of the French treasury at that time. He was cleared in June 2003, which left the way clear for him to move to the ECB. A parliamentary inquiry found no wrong-doing by Trichet, other civil servants or the three finance ministers in office during the critical period.

As part of a 2015 investigation launced by Austria’s parliament into defunct lender Hypo Alpe Adria, then opposition party NEOS named Trichet among 200 people it wanted to question. At the time of Austria purchasing Hypo Alpe Adria from BayernLB in late 2009, Trichet had lobbied for the deal.

At the height of the euro crisis, Trichet publicly criticized President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had agreed at a meeting in Deauville in 2010 that sovereign debt could be restructured in a bailout to make private investors pay their share; the plan was never implemented.

During his time in office, Trichet oversaw the ECB’s response to the European debt crisis, including its Securities Markets Programme to stem the crisis in eurozone government bond markets. In 2011, ECB board member Jürgen Stark resigned in what was widely seen as a protest against this policy.

At the ceremony for the Charlemagne Prize in 2011, Trichet called for the creation of a central finance ministry to oversee spending by countries that use the euro.

On 5 August 2011 Trichet wrote, together with Mario Draghi, a letter to the Italian government to push for a series of economic measures that would soon be implemented in Italy.

Within the European Central Bank, Trichet strongly resisted any contemplation of Greece defaulting on its debt. It was only in October 2011, with the end of his term imminent, that consensus was reached to allow a 50% cut in the value of Greek bonds.

On 28 January 2012, the board of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company approved Trichet’s nomination to the Board, where he represented (with Dominique d’Hinnin of the Lagardère Group) the French state’s holding company SOGEADE.

Trichet succeeded Mario Monti as chairman of the European branch of the Trilateral Commission in 2012.

In 2015, Trichet joined forces with two other former governors of the Bank of France – Michel Camdessus and Jacques de Larosière – in publicly supporting President François Hollande’s appointment of François Villeroy de Galhau to head the central bank.

In a 2019 article for the Financial Times, Trichet publicly hit back against some of his former colleagues at the European Central Bank – including Jürgen Stark and Otmar Issing, who both worked as ECB chief economist under Trichet’s presidency –, calling them “misguided” in their criticism of the loose monetary policy pursued by his successor as president Mario Draghi.