President Trump has warned French President Emmanuel Macron to scrap France's 3% digital services tax on American tech giants — or face a punishing 100% tariff on French champagne and wine, according to the New York Post.
The threat comes ahead of the G7 conference being held in France, and marks yet another escalation in a long-running dispute between Washington and Paris over how European countries tax big US technology companies, as Engadget reports.
France's digital services tax targets large online platforms and applies a 3% levy on revenues generated from French users. The US has long argued that such taxes unfairly single out American companies like Google, Apple, and Meta.
By pointing his tariff threat at wine — one of France's most iconic exports and a politically sensitive industry — Trump is applying maximum pressure outside the tech sector itself, using French farmers and vintners as leverage to force a policy change in a completely different industry.
This matters because it illustrates how the global fight over taxing Big Tech can ripple outward to affect entirely unrelated industries, turning a narrow digital policy dispute into a broader trade confrontation with real consequences for workers and businesses on both sides of the Atlantic.