Exclusive | Trump warns France in exclusive interview with The Post: Kill tech tax or face 100% wine tariffs: I have no choice
President Trump warned that France is at risk of a fresh trade war with America — declaring in an exclusive interview with The Post that unless Paris axes its digital tax on American tech giants, the US will “have no choice” but to slap 100% tariffs on French wines.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.”The ultimatum sets the stage for a bitter showdown at Monday’s G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, the annual meeting of seven of the world’s wealthiest democracies to set the rules on global trade, security, and economic policy that helps move markets.His comments also shatter claims made last week by Macron’s office, the Élysée Palace, that the two nations had quietly settled their long-running spat over taxing Silicon Valley.A senior source close to the French president told reporters last week that the issue was “no longer up for debate” amongst G7 countries — an account a US official immediately dismissed as “not accurate.”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 pressure intensified in October when France’s deeply divided National Assembly, ...