Trump threatens 100% tariff on French wine over digital tax

A threatened 100% tariff on French wine and champagne could quickly ripple through American importers, restaurants, retailers and consumers, raising costs on bottles that have become staples of U.S. tables. Donald Trump tied the threat to France’s 3% digital services tax on large American technology companies, escalating a fight that could move well beyond wine and into a wider transatlantic trade clash.

Trump said France should scrap the levy or face retaliation, telling the New York Post that Washington would have “no choice” if Paris kept the tax in place. The warning landed as Group of Seven leaders gathered in Évian-les-Bains, France, on the shores of Lake Geneva, and it came at a delicate moment for markets that had already been relieved by a separate U.S.-Iran peace announcement.

The target of France’s tax is familiar to companies that have spent years in the crossfire of U.S.-Europe trade disputes: Amazon, Apple, Meta and Alphabet. France introduced the digital services tax in 2019, arguing that digital giants should pay more on revenue generated from French users and advertising activity. The levy applies at a 3% rate to certain digital services when a company’s annual global revenue tops €750 million and its French digital-services revenue exceeds €25 million.

French officials have defended the measure as tax sovereignty, not discrimination, and the country’s Constitutional Court upheld the tax in 2025, strengthening Paris’s legal case. Macron answered Trump forcefully at the summit, saying France would not bow to pressure and would not let Washington decide French or European law. The dispute is now testing whether Trump’s tariff-first approach remains a negotiating tactic or becomes a broader rupture with allies over digital taxation and industrial policy.

The commercial stakes are significant. In 2025, the United States imported about $6.22 billion of wine overall, and France supplied about $2.38 billion of that total. A tariff of that scale would likely hit prices and volumes hard, especially for French wines and champagne that depend heavily on the U.S. market. For American buyers, that could mean higher bills not just at wine shops but across restaurant wine lists and retail shelves.

The threat also revived an older fight. In 2019, the U.S. Trade Representative found France’s digital services tax discriminatory and proposed tariffs of up to 100% on roughly $2.4 billion of French goods. Trump’s latest warning shows that conflict over Big Tech taxation has not gone away, and it threatens to overshadow the G7 agenda just as leaders were trying to project unity.