Trump Threatens 100 Percent Tariff On French Wine To Protect Apple And Amazon From A 3 Percent French Tax, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Americans Could Still Afford Champagne

The Filing

ÉVIAN-LES-BAINS, FRANCE. Arriving for a working lunch with French President Emmanuel Macron ahead of this week's Group of Seven summit, President Donald J. Trump announced that he would impose a 100 percent tariff on every bottle of wine and champagne the United States imports from France unless Paris repeals the 3 percent tax it levies on American technology companies, resolving the long-standing concern that American consumers could still afford a glass of Bordeaux while four of the most valuable corporations in the history of capitalism remained exposed to a modest foreign levy.

The dispute concerns France's digital services tax, a 3 percent charge that since 2019 has applied to the French revenues of large technology firms, among them Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta. The President's proposed remedy, a 100 percent tariff, would double the shelf price of French wine in the United States. Because a tariff is a tax collected at the American border and paid by the American importer, the cost would fall not on France, and not on the technology companies, but on the wine shops, restaurants, and consumers who purchase the wine, a feature of tariffs that has remained consistent across the President's eight years of enthusiasm for them.

"I asked him not to charge American companies, and if they do, I have no choice but to charge a 100 percent tariff on all champagnes and all wines coming out of France," the President told the New York Post, framing a tax paid by Americans as the only available means of protecting Americans. Aides described the position as firm.

The threat is not the President's first on the subject. In 2019, during his first term, his trade office proposed tariffs of up to 100 percent on roughly 2.4 billion dollars of French wine, cheese, and handbags in response to the same 3 percent tax, a campaign that ended without the tax being repealed. France has once again declined to repeal it, with the Macron government noting that French law is written in France. The President has indicated he will continue pressing the matter at the summit, a gathering of allies the administration has spent the year tariffing, insulting, and threatening.

"The President believes very strongly that no American company should have to pay a foreign tax it can easily afford," said one official familiar with the strategy, who added that the administration was confident American wine drinkers would understand the sacrifice being asked of them. The official did not address whether the domestic wineries positioned to gain from the absence of French competition included the one in Charlottesville, Virginia, that bears the President's name.

At press time, the President had clarified that the tariff was a tax on France, a country that does not import French wine.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who gains trade-war leverage, a posture as defender of American industry, and a useful distraction from the allies he is otherwise antagonizing at the summit.
§Trump Winery in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Trump-family-branded vineyard whose domestic product becomes relatively cheaper the instant its imported French competitors double in price.
§Domestic American wineries generally, briefly shielded from foreign competition by a tax on their rivals that American consumers, not the rivals, will pay.
§Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta, the trillion-dollar firms spared a 3 percent French levy by a President willing to tax his own citizens' wine to defend them.
§Tariff and trade-litigation lawyers, who bill for every exclusion request, compliance filing, and retaliatory cycle that a new front in the trade war reliably produces.

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