President Trump landed in France on Monday for the Group of Seven summit in Evian-les-Bains warning host President Emmanuel Macron that he would impose a 100 percent tariff on French wine and champagne unless Paris scraps a 3 percent digital services tax on American technology companies, a threat he made public hours before the gathering opened on the shores of Lake Geneva.
The demand stakes the meeting's first public confrontation to trade rather than the Iran war Trump declared over Sunday night, and it puts France's roughly $2 billion in annual U.S. wine exports — about one-fifth of the industry's global sales — on the table alongside agenda items already including Ukraine, AI regulation and Chinese dominance of rare-earth minerals.
The tariff threat
Trump told the New York Post, in remarks CNBC cited Monday, that he had asked Macron "not to charge American companies, and if they do, I have no choice but to charge a 100% tariff on all champagnes and all wines coming out of France" — a threat ahead of his arrival on French soil. The French digital services tax, passed in 2019, applies a 3 percent levy on gross French revenues of large technology companies including Amazon, Meta and Alphabet.
French wine shipments to the United States already fell 15.9 percent in value last year to 1.9 billion euros, the American Association of Wine Economists reported, citing French customs data. The trade group said it could not yet tell whether the drop reflected earlier Trump tariffs or a consumer shift toward cheaper bottles.
The summit table
Macron, who holds the rotating G7 presidency, postponed the summit by a day so Trump could attend Sunday's UFC card on the White House South Lawn marking his 80th birthday, NBC News reported. After the closing session, Trump is scheduled to dine privately with Macron at the Palace of Versailles.
Macron has described Trump's Feb. 28 attack on Iran as "outside the framework of international law" in remarks NBC reported. A Macron aide told reporters France wants the G7 to agree on sustaining support for Ukraine and to reject any settlement that cedes Ukrainian territory to Russia. Trump and the other leaders are scheduled to meet Tuesday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
France also invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Al Jazeera reported. Executives from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Mistral AI are expected for sessions on AI policy.
The counterpoint
A senior Trump administration official, briefing reporters last week, said of Ukraine, "We need the war to end. We're happy to have that happen, however possible" — a posture European leaders fear could yield Russian territorial gains. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told NBC News that Trump is "going to vent" about European reluctance to back the Iran campaign. Today's body-tier sources are all center or lean-left wires; no right-leaning outlet's framing of the tariff threat was available at press time.
The summit closes Tuesday with the Zelenskyy session and the Versailles dinner, after which Trump returns to Washington.