PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron has told his ministers that the European Union should consider retaliatory measures against the U.S. digital sector after President Donald Trump threatened additional tariffs over tech regulation and taxes, according to a senior French government official.
At his weekly Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the French president said Europe “should not exclude taking a look at the digital sector” following Trump’s broadside on Monday, according to the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.
“The European Union has a big trade deficit with the United States, we need to focus on this,” Macron was quoted as saying, referring to the EU’s negative trade balance in services with the United States. The bloc has a trade surplus in goods, such as automobiles, pharmaceuticals and food that Trump wants to get down.
A person close to Macron confirmed that exploring possible retaliation against U.S. digital players was indeed “his stance.”
Trump threatened Monday to impose further tariffs on countries whose digital rules, in his view, discriminate against American companies. This came weeks after Washington and Brussels struck a trade deal that sets a baseline 15 percent tariff on EU exports to the U.S. The two sides only published a joint statement fixing that deal last week, and Trump’s latest diatribe came as a nasty surprise to EU officials.
The Trump administration has for months criticized the EU’s digital rulebook — claiming that the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, respectively, censor American citizens and unfairly target U.S. companies.
France has long been at the forefront of European calls to take a tougher line against Trump on trade.
However, a majority of EU countries lacks the appetite to launch a full-scale trade war, leading Brussels so far to refrain from imposing any tariff countermeasures or activating its so-called trade bazooka, the Anti-Coercion Instrument. This could, with the support of most member countries, be used to restrict the intellectual property rights of U.S. tech giants or bar them from investing in the EU.
At the height of recent transatlantic trade tensions, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that “all instruments are on the table” to respond to Trump, but she then shied away from taking a hard line to keep the U.S. president engaged in efforts to end the war in Ukraine.
The French president has expressed veiled dissatisfaction with the trade deal that was struck with Trump, letting it be known that Europe “was not feared enough” to get a good trade deal.
According to the first official, Macron is expected to raise this issue with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz later this week during a two-day stay in Macron’s summer retreat Fort Brégançon and the southern city of Toulon.
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