Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on the UK if it does not drop its digital services tax on US social media firms.<\/p>\n
The digital services tax, introduced in 2020, imposes a 2% levy on the revenues of several major US tech companies.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters from the Oval Office on Thursday, the US president said: \u201cWe\u2019ve been looking at it and we can meet that very easily by just putting a big tariff on the UK, so they better be careful.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they don\u2019t drop the tax, we\u2019ll probably put a big tariff on the UK.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tax targets companies whose worldwide revenues from digital activities exceed \u00a3500m ($673m), with more than \u00a325m of the revenues from UK users.<\/p>\n
Trump argued the laws, which have long been a source of tension in US-UK relations, targeted \u201ctop companies in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe UK did it, a couple of other people did it,\u201d he said. \u201cThey think they\u2019re going to make an easy buck, that\u2019s why they\u2019ve all taken advantage of our country.\u201d<\/p>\n
The digital services tax went unchanged under the UK-US trade deal agreed in May <\/a>2025, despite being a point of discussion.<\/p>\n Asked how high the tariff would be, the president said it would be \u201cmore than what they\u2019re getting\u201d from the levy. \u201cWhat we\u2019ll do is we\u2019ll reciprocate by putting something on that\u2019s equal or greater than what they\u2019re doing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The latest remarks add to wider strains in US-UK relations<\/a>, which have deteriorated after Sir Keir Starmer ruled out UK involvement in the conflict in the Middle East<\/a>.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, Trump suggested the terms of the UK-US trade agreement brokered last year \u201ccan always be changed\u201d in an interview with Sky News.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s comments come months after similar US threats to impose new tariffs and export controls on countries with digital taxes or regulations affecting American tech giants. A number of European countries, like France, Italy and Spain, have a digital services tax.<\/p>\n In a post on Truth Social from August 2025, Trump said he would \u201cstand up to countries that attack our incredible American tech companies\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cDigital taxes, digital services legislation, and digital markets regulations are all designed to harm, or discriminate against, American technology,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cThis must end,\u201d he said and vowed that \u201cunless these discriminatory actions are removed\u201d, he would \u201cimpose substantial additional tariffs\u201d on the offending nation\u2019s exports to the US.<\/p>\n Downing Street has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on the UK if it does not drop its digital services…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-547597","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}