Trump Threatens 100% Tariff on French Wine and Champagne Over Digital Tax

President Trump has threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on French wine and champagne in response to France's levy on large technology companies, Euronews reported. The threat comes just before the Group of Seven (G7) summit in France, where trade disputes appear on the agenda alongside the wars in Iran and Ukraine.

France's digital services tax falls on the revenue that large platforms earn within the country, a design that Washington has long argued unfairly targets American firms. Paris and other European capitals counter that such companies book profits in low-tax jurisdictions and pay little where their users actually are. The dispute has recurred repeatedly, and the proposed tariff would fall on one of France's major export industries.

Deutsche Welle, in its coverage of the summit, reported that leaders of the wealthiest economies gathered cautiously, with the United States promising peace in Iran and European partners watching to see whether trade tensions would overshadow the meeting.

The episode fits a broader pattern. Washington has been rebuilding a wide tariff regime, and tying duties to a specific national tax measure extends that approach into digital policy. For an open trading system, the lesson is that tariffs are increasingly used as a general-purpose instrument of leverage rather than a narrow response to subsidies or to dumping, the practice of selling exports below cost.