Trump warns France in exclusive interview with The – Business News
President Trump warned that France is at risk of a recent commerce struggle with America — declaring in an exclusive interview with The Post that until Paris axes its digital tax on American tech giants, the US will “have no choice” however to slap 100% tariffs on French wines.
Trump mentioned he gave the blunt warning on to outgoing French President Emmanuel Macron, demanding he ditch the three% tech levy or face devastating duties in the American market, which accounts for a fifth of the French wine industry’s world gross sales — price more than $2 billion yearly.
“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 informed The Post. “All [Macron] has to do is get rid of the sales tax, and he wouldn’t have that kind of pressure.”
tPresident Trump slammed the French tech tax in an interview with The Post, saying it have to be scrapped or the nation’s winemakers will face a 100% tariff in the event that they wish to sell their merchandise in the profitable US market. AFP through Getty Images
The ultimatum units the stage for a bitter showdown at Monday’s G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, the annual assembly of seven of the world’s wealthiest democracies to set the principles on world commerce, security, and financial coverage that helps transfer markets.
His feedback additionally shatter claims made final week by Macron’s workplace, the Élysée Palace, that the 2 nations had quietly settled their long-running spat over taxing Silicon Valley.
A senior source close to the French president informed reporters final week that the problem was “no longer up for debate” amongst G7 nations — an account a US official instantly dismissed as “not accurate.”
France’s digital companies tax, generally often called the GAFAM tax, has been on the books since 2019. It imposes a sweeping 3% levy on the native income generated by the likes of Google guardian Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Apple.
Because the coverage targets gross income slightly than earnings, it hits US tech titans the toughest, raking in roughly $700 million final 12 months alone in keeping with the French finance ministry.
The French digital gross sales taxes raked in as a lot as $700M final 12 months, in keeping with the nation’s finance ministry. diy13 – stock.adobe.com
The stress intensified in October when France’s deeply divided National Assembly, the nation’s reply to the House of Representatives, voted 296-58 to double the tax to six% and slim the brink to completely goal the most important world gamers. The transfer was finally vetoed by ministers.
Lawmakers had even initially floated a punitive 15% hike earlier than scaling it back underneath industry stress. Then-Economy Minister Roland Lescure warned on the time that a “disproportionate” tax would invite “disproportionate” American reprisals.
That reprisal is now taking form. Trump’s newest menace revives the punishing 100% tariff stage first proposed by the US Trade Representative during a 2019 investigation into the French tax.
While Macron has beforehand been dubbed a “Trump whisperer” succesful of reducing offers with the billionaire real estate mogul — together with an eleventh-hour truce on the 2019 G7 in Biarritz — the Trump administration is now taking a tougher line globally.
Aside from this 12 months’s hosts France and the United States, the opposite G7 nations Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the UK.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been described at occasions as ‘a Trump whisperer’ who is ready to cut offers with the billionnare real estate mogul. POOL/AFP through Getty Images
When approached for remark, White House spokesman Kush Desai pointed The Post to a presidential memo from February 2025 stating that American companies would no longer “prop up failed foreign economies through extortive fines and taxes.”
The memo tasked US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and the Treasury Department with deciding whether or not to reopen a formal probe into the French levy. Neither division responded to requests for remark.
France’s aggressive tax hike isolates it from a number of key allies who’ve bowed to Washington’s stress. Canada shelved its own digital tax in 2025 after the US broke off commerce talks, and Italy is reportedly weighing a repeal of its levy.
Britain, nonetheless, has retained its digital companies tax underneath its present commerce preparations with America.
The G7 (Group of Seven) summit runs till Wednesday in the French lakeside city of Evian.
The membership of the world’s seven largest so-called “advanced” economies, which dominate world commerce and the worldwide financial system, consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the United States.
Russia joined in 1998, creating the G8, however was excluded after it seized Crimea. China has by no means been a member, regardless of its massive economic system and having the world’s second-largest population
