The Trump regime is threatening to slap tariffs on over $4 billion worth of French goods imported into the United States as retaliation for a new digital services tax recently instituted in France. The French tax of 3 per cent is applied on the revenues of about 30 Big Tech companies, most of which are based in the U.S. The Trump regime’s tariffs on France could be as high as 100 per cent and would include everything from cheese to cosmetics to Champagne.
President Trump, speaking to reporters today in London during a press event for this year’s meeting of NATO leaders, said that while he doesn’t like American tech companies, he really dislikes the idea of European countries placing new taxes on American tech firms.
“Look, I’m not in love with those companies, Facebook, Google, and all of them… Twitter, although I guess I do pretty well with Twitter […] but they’re our companies, they’re American companies. I want to tax those companies,” Trump said at today’s press event while sitting next to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. “So if France is gonna put a tax on, it’s totally out of the blue.”
“If anyone’s gonna take advantage of the American companies it’s gonna be us, it’s not gonna be France,” Trump continued, using the mafia-style language that has come to define his presidency. “So we’re taxing, as you know, we’re taxing their wines and everything else.”
“We have a very, very big tax to put on them, plus we have a tax going on Airbus and that’ll be a good thing for Boeing,” Trump said.
The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) released a list on Monday with the French goods that would be taxed, including handbags, soaps, cheese, and sparkling wine. Trump also took the opportunity to whine about French president Emmanuel Macron recently calling NATO “brain dead,” saying that it was a “very, very nasty statement.”
“NATO serves a great purpose. I think that’s very insulting,” Trump said, reversing a narrative that saw Trump insulting NATO just last year, to say nothing of the year before that. President Trump has also discussed completely pulling the U.S. out of NATO, according to multiple news reports.
“Nobody needs NATO more than France. It’s a very dangerous statement for them to make,” Trump said.
Today’s press event went into a number of different topics, including a rambling moment where Trump repeatedly talked about keeping oil in Syria, a clear war crime.
“We have the oil,” Trump said over and over. “We can do with the oil what we want.”
President Trump is nothing if not a huge fan of war crimes.