{"id":267094,"date":"2026-06-15T06:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T06:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/267094\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T06:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T06:58:09","slug":"trump-warns-france-in-exclusive-interview-with-the-post-kill-tech-tax-or-face-100-wine-tariffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/267094\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump warns France in exclusive interview with The Post: Kill tech tax or face 100% wine tariffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Trump warned that France is at risk of a fresh trade war with America \u2014 declaring in an exclusive interview with The Post that unless Paris axes its digital tax on American tech giants<\/a>, the US will \u201chave no choice\u201d but to slap 100% tariffs on French wines.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s global sales \u2014 worth more than $2 billion annually.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d Trump told The Post. \u201cAll [Macron] has to do is get rid of the sales tax, and he wouldn\u2019t have that kind of pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n

tPresident Trump slammed the French tech tax in an interview with The Post, saying it must be scrapped or the country\u2019s winemakers will face a 100% tariff if they want to sell their products in the lucrative US market. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The ultimatum<\/a> sets the stage for a bitter showdown at Monday\u2019s G7 summit in \u00c9vian-les-Bains, the annual meeting of seven of the world\u2019s wealthiest democracies to set the rules on global trade, security, and economic policy that helps move markets.<\/p>\n

His comments also shatter claims made last week by Macron\u2019s office, the \u00c9lys\u00e9e Palace, that the two nations had quietly settled their long-running spat over taxing Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n

A senior source close to the French president told reporters last week that the issue was \u201cno longer up for debate\u201d amongst G7 countries \u2014 an account a US official immediately dismissed as \u201cnot accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n

France\u2019s digital services tax, commonly known as the GAFAM tax, has been on the books since 2019<\/a>. It imposes a sweeping 3% levy on the local revenue generated by the likes of Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Apple.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The French digital sales taxes raked in as much as $700M last year, according to the country\u2019s finance ministry. diy13 \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

The pressure intensified in October when France\u2019s deeply divided National Assembly, the country\u2019s answer to the House of Representatives, voted 296-58 to double the tax to 6% and narrow the threshold to exclusively target the largest global players. The move was eventually vetoed by ministers.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers had even originally floated a punitive 15% hike before scaling it back under industry pressure. Then-Economy Minister Roland Lescure warned at the time that a \u201cdisproportionate\u201d tax would invite \u201cdisproportionate\u201d American reprisals.<\/p>\n

That reprisal is now taking shape. Trump\u2019s latest threat revives the punishing 100% tariff level first proposed by the US Trade Representative during a 2019 investigation into the French tax.<\/p>\n

While Macron has previously been dubbed a \u201cTrump whisperer\u201d capable of cutting deals with the billionaire real estate mogul \u2014 including an eleventh-hour truce at the 2019 G7 in Biarritz \u2014 the Trump administration is now taking a harder line globally.<\/p>\n

French President Emmanuel Macron has been described at times as \u2018a Trump whisperer\u2019 who is able to cut deals with the billionnare real estate mogul. POOL\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

When approached for comment, White House spokesman Kush Desai pointed The Post to a presidential memo from February 2025 stating that American businesses would no longer \u201cprop up failed foreign economies through extortive fines and taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The memo tasked US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and the Treasury Department with deciding whether to reopen a formal probe into the French levy. Neither department responded to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

France\u2019s aggressive tax hike isolates it from several key allies who have bowed to Washington\u2019s pressure. Canada shelved its own digital tax in 2025 after the US broke off trade talks, and Italy is reportedly weighing a repeal of its levy. <\/p>\n

Britain, however, has retained its digital services tax under its current trade arrangements with America.<\/p>\n

The G7 (Group of Seven) summit runs until Wednesday in the French lakeside town of Evian.<\/p>\n

The club of the world\u2019s seven largest so-called \u201cadvanced\u201d economies, which dominate global trade and the international financial system, includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the United States.<\/p>\n

Russia joined in 1998, creating the G8, but was excluded after it seized Crimea. China has never been a member, despite its large economy and having the world\u2019s second-largest population<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump warned that France is at risk of a fresh trade war with America \u2014 declaring in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[288,153,7465,9,11,10,87,13881,2780,901,58,8983,1076],"class_list":["post-267094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-business","tag-donald-trump","tag-france","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-politics","tag-silicon-valley","tag-taxes","tag-united-states","tag-us-news","tag-wine","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}