Donald Trump Blasts Emmanuel Macron Over French Plan To Tax American Tech Companies
President Donald Trump blasted French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday at an event planned to promote unity, according to a report from The Los Angeles Times.
At a NATO event in London on Tuesday, the American president reportedly took issue with some of Macron’s past comments, calling them “very very nasty” and “very disrespectful,” according to the LA Times report.
Per The LA Times, Trump’s comments came not long before a planned meeting between the leaders of NATO member countries meant to show unity among the alliance as it celebrates its 70th anniversary, which occurred in April this year.
In particular, the president took issue with Macron’s comments over the effectiveness over NATO, which The LA Times noted the president has himself questioned. According to a report from The Inquisitr at the beginning of the year, the president had reportedly privately suggested to his aides that the United States should attempt to withdraw from the decades-old alliance. The president has, since before his inauguration in 2017, reportedly believed the alliance is “obsolete.”
President Trump also took offense to another one of Macron’s recent comments in which he suggested that France would levy a 3 percent tax on technology companies, which would include big American corporations like Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Google.
Trump reportedly suggested that the plan would “take advantage” of the American companies.
“If anybody’s going to take advantage of the American companies it’s going to be us,” Trump said, per The LA Times. “It’s not going to be France.”
According to a report from The New York Times in July, relations between the United States and France reached a boiling point when the nation first announced it planned to implement such a tax.
“We’re being confronted with the emergence of economic giants that are monopolistic and that not only want to control the maximum amount of data, but also escape fair taxes,” Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister told The New York Times this summer. “It’s a question of justice.”
The Trump administration meanwhile reportedly warned the French government that any such action could be considered an “unfair trade practice,” per The New York Times. French leaders responded that the nation would continue to make its own sovereign taxation rules.
Back at NATO Tuesday, the president also reportedly continued to walk back his previous comments that suggested the U.S. trade war with China would soon be coming to a close. The president said Tuesday he had “no deadline” for negotiations and said making a deal was entirely dependent on whether he wanted to make it.
