{"id":521686,"date":"2026-06-27T19:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T19:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/521686\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T19:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T19:58:08","slug":"trump-rekindles-his-global-trade-war-with-100-tariff-threat-on-european-countries-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/521686\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump rekindles his global trade war with 100% tariff threat on European countries \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump<\/a> has threatened to place a 100 per cent import tariff<\/a> on any European country that imposes a tax on digital services from US companies.<\/p>\n

Writing on Truth Social on Friday, the US president said that \u201cnumerous European countries\u201d had been discussing putting a digital services tax on American companies and that \u201csome of these countries are close to actually doing this\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease let this statement serve to represent that any country that imposes such a tax will immediately be met with a 100% TARIFF on any and all Goods sent to the United States of America,\u201d Trump continued.<\/p>\n

He added that the tariff would be immediately imposed and supersede any other prior trade deals that existed with the country.<\/p>\n

The threat could set off another saga in Trump\u2019s global trade war, in which he has placed drastic tariffs on countries and economic blocs at once. If Trump followed through on his warning, it could set off a larger trade war between the US and EU<\/a> if the 27-country economic bloc felt compelled to retaliate to the tariff hike.<\/p>\n

France, Spain and Italy impose a digital services tax of 3per cent on large companies working in their countries, while several other EU countries have either implemented or proposed similar policies.<\/p>\n

The UK has a 2 per cent digital services tax that applies to social media platforms, large search engines and online marketplaces which have global revenues from digital services exceeding \u00a3500 million (\u20ac579 million), total UK revenues of over \u00a325 million and \u201cderive value\u201d from UK users. The digital services tax applies to US tech companies such as Apple, Google and Amazon, and raised more than \u00a3800 million in 2024-2025, according to the UK treasury.<\/p>\n

An EU spokesperson said that the economic bloc reserved the right to defend itself against such tariffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnilateral measures targeting such legitimate policies are unjustified. If pursued, the EU will respond swiftly and decisively to defend its rights and regulatory autonomy,\u201d said Olof Gill, a spokesperson for the European Commission. Gill said that digital services taxes did not target companies from any countries in particular and that they applied to \u201call large companies, regardless of their origin\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Bullish markets treat Trump\u2019s high-volume rhetoric as background noiseOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Trump has repeatedly railed against countries trying to impose taxes or regulate US tech companies. He had previously threatened to impose tariffs on any countries that tried to do so. In April, Trump said the UK could face a \u201cbig tariff\u201d for what he described as targeting of US companies with taxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey think they\u2019re going to make an easy buck, that\u2019s why they\u2019ve all taken advantage of our country,\u201d Trump said in April.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s threats came as his July 4th deadline for the EU and US to start implementing a tariff deal looms. In May, the EU signed a trade deal with the US which caps most tariffs on EU imports at 15 per cent \u2013 a deal that came after months of wrangling and tensions between the two sides.<\/p>\n

Digital services taxes were not a part of that agreement and continue to be an obstacle to trade talks. <\/p>\n

\u2013 Guardian <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has threatened to place a 100 per cent import tariff on any European country that imposes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3468,936,969,2244,41564,1712,1711,42,43,40,38,41,39,33938,90,1963],"class_list":["post-521686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-amazon","tag-apple","tag-donald-trump","tag-eu","tag-eu-us-trade","tag-european-commission","tag-google","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-truth-social","tag-us","tag-us-tariffs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521686","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=521686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}