President Donald Trump told The New York Post that he “will have no choice” but to place 100% tariffs on French wine if France doesn’t get rid of the digital tax on American technology companies:
Trump said he gave the blunt warning directly to outgoing French President Emmanuel Macron, demanding he ditch the 3% tech levy or face devastating duties in the American market, which accounts for a fifth of the French wine industry’s global sales — worth more than $2 billion annually.“I asked him not to charge American companies, and if they do, I have no choice but to charge a 100% tariff on all champagnes and all wines coming out of France,” Trump told The Post. “All [Macron] has to do is get rid of the sales tax, and he wouldn’t have that kind of pressure.”
Macron and Trump will meet at the G7 Summit in Évian-les-Bains.
Someone in Macron’s office said the problem has been resolved but a US official disagreed:
France’s digital services tax, commonly known as the GAFAM tax, has been on the books since 2019. It imposes a sweeping 3% levy on the local revenue generated by the likes of Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Apple.Because the policy targets gross revenue rather than profits, it hits US tech titans the hardest, raking in roughly $700 million last year alone according to the French finance ministry.
The French National Assembly tried to double the tax to 6& last year, but the ministers shit it down.
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