President Donald Trump on Friday threatened to slap a 100% tariff on any country that imposes a digital services tax on American technology companies, singling out European nations he said were close to adopting such measures.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that “European Countries have been discussing the imminent implementation of a Digital Services Tax on American Companies,” adding that any country that follows through “will immediately be met with a 100% TARIFF on any and all Goods sent to the United States of America.” He said the tariff would override existing trade agreements with the country involved.
Digital services taxes target large technology firms — typically companies like Meta, Alphabet and Amazon — that generate substantial revenue in a country without maintaining a taxable physical presence there. Several European governments have weighed such levies as a way to capture tax revenue from US tech giants that dominate their digital markets.
The threat lands just over a week before Trump’s July 4 deadline for the European Union to begin implementing a trade deal, finalized in May, that caps most tariffs on EU exports at 15%. Digital taxes were left out of that agreement and have remained a persistent point of friction between Washington and Brussels.
It remains unclear what legal authority Trump would use to impose the new tariffs. A Supreme Court ruling earlier this year limited his ability to unilaterally set tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, prompting his administration to rely instead on a temporary blanket tariff under the Trade Act of 1974 and on separate trade investigations.
Britain, which has imposed its own 2% digital services tax since 2020, was not named directly in Trump’s post, though the UK policy has previously drawn similar threats from Washington. Last year, Trump persuaded Canada to drop a planned digital services tax amid broader trade negotiations between the two countries.
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