President Trump warned that France is at risk of a fresh trade war with America — declaring in an exclusive interview with The Post that unless Paris axes its digital tax on American tech giants, the US will “have no choice” but to slap 100% tariffs on French wines.
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’s global sales — worth more than $2 billion annually.
“I 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,” Trump told The Post. “All [Macron] has to do is get rid of the sales tax, and he wouldn’t have that kind of pressure.”
The ultimatum sets the stage for a bitter showdown at Monday’s G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, the annual meeting of seven of the world’s wealthiest democracies to set the rules on global trade, security, and economic policy that helps move markets.
His comments also shatter claims made last week by Macron’s office, the Élysée Palace, that the two nations had quietly settled their long-running spat over taxing Silicon Valley.
A senior source close to the French president told reporters last week that the issue was “no longer up for debate” amongst G7 countries — an account a US official immediately dismissed as “not accurate.”
France’s digital services tax, commonly known as the GAFAM tax, has been on the books since 2019. It imposes a sweeping 3% levy on the local revenue generated by the likes of Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Apple.
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.
The pressure intensified in October when France’s deeply divided National Assembly, the country’s 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.
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 “disproportionate” tax would invite “disproportionate” American reprisals.
That reprisal is now taking shape. Trump’s latest threat revives the punishing 100% tariff level first proposed by the US Trade Representative during a 2019 investigation into the French tax.
While Macron has previously been dubbed a “Trump whisperer” capable of cutting deals with the billionaire real estate mogul — including an eleventh-hour truce at the 2019 G7 in Biarritz — the Trump administration is now taking a harder line globally.
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 “prop up failed foreign economies through extortive fines and taxes.”
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.
France’s aggressive tax hike isolates it from several key allies who have bowed to Washington’s 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.
Britain, however, has retained its digital services tax under its current trade arrangements with America.
The G7 (Group of Seven) summit runs until Wednesday in the French lakeside town of Evian.
The club of the world’s seven largest so-called “advanced” economies, which dominate global trade and the international financial system, includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the United States.
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’s second-largest population
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