Trump’s initiative, which would start by addressing Gaza and then expand to deal with other conflicts, raises questions about the role of the United Nations and a source close to Macron said the French president intended to decline the invitation to join.<\/p>\n
When asked about Macron’s stance, Trump said, “Did he say that? Well, nobody wants him because he will be out of office very soon.”<\/p>\n
“I’ll put a 200pc tariff on his wines and champagnes, and he’ll join, but he doesn’t have to join,” Trump said.<\/p>\n
Macron is due in Davos for the day on Tuesday before a scheduled return to Paris in the evening. Elysee aides have said there are no plans to extend his stay to Wednesday, when Trump arrives in the Swiss mountain resort town.<\/p>\n
In another shot at the French leader, Trump published a private message from Macron in which he said he did not understand Trump’s actions over Greenland. France holds an election to replace Macron in 2027.<\/p>\n
Wines and spirits exported to the United States from the European Union currently face a 15pc tariff – a rate the French have been lobbying hard to reduce to zero since Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen agreed a US-EU trade deal in Scotland last summer.<\/p>\n
The United States is the largest market for French wine and spirits, with shipments to the US at 3.8 billion euros in 2024.<\/p>\n
Gabriel Picard, chairman of the French wine and spirits export lobby FEVS, told Reuters on Monday, before the new threat, that the industry had seen a 20pc to 25pc hit to US activity in the second half of last year from previous trade measures.<\/p>\n
A Macron aide said the Elysee took note of Trump’s remarks and stressed that tariff threats to influence a third party’s foreign policy were unacceptable.<\/p>\n
Europeans are weighing their own 93 billion euro tariff riposte and even the use of the bloc’s “Anti-Coercion Instrument” to retaliate against a separate threat of tariff hikes against a group of European states over Greenland.<\/p>\n
“It’s brutal, it’s designed to break us, it’s a tool for blackmail. All of this is outrageous,” French Farm Minister Annie Genevard told news channel TF1.<\/p>\n
“We have the tools; Europeans must take responsibility. We cannot allow such an escalation.”<\/p>\n
Trump has threatened a 200pc tariff on wine and other alcoholic beverages imported from the EU before, including last year in March as transatlantic trade tensions escalated.<\/p>\n
Governments have reacted cautiously to Trump’s Board of Peace invitation, a plan that diplomats said could harm the work of the United Nations.<\/p>\n
A draft charter sent to about 60 countries by the US administration calls for members to contribute $1bn in cash if they want their membership to last more than three years, according to the document seen by Reuters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trump’s initiative, which would start by addressing Gaza and then expand to deal with other conflicts, raises questions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,898,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-254265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news-ticker","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}