Trump Threatens 100% Tariff on French Wine and Champagne

A 100% tariff on all French wine and champagne would take effect unless Paris scraps its 3% tax on the revenue of US tech companies, US President Donald Trump said ahead of his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron before the start of the G7 summit. The announcement opens a new transatlantic trade front and targets a category that ranks among the European Union’s leading exports to the US: alcohol was worth about 9 billion euros in 2024, according to Eurostat data.

The dispute centers on France’s taxation of digital services. The 3% levy on tech company revenue has been in force since 2019 and applies to firms with revenue above 25 million euros in France and 750 million euros globally. That threshold effectively hits the largest US platforms, and Washington reads it as a measure aimed at its own industry rather than a neutral fiscal instrument.

“I asked him not to charge American companies, and if they do it, I have no choice but to put a 100% tariff on all the champagne and all the wines from France,” Trump said, shifting the burden of the decision onto Paris.

Who would pay a 100% tariff?

A 100% tariff would effectively double the import price of French wine and champagne on the US market. The cost would flow through a chain that starts with producers in Champagne, Bordeaux and Burgundy and ends with the US importer, distributor and consumer. For Champagne houses, where the name is geographically protected and cannot be produced outside the region, the US is one of the largest export markets, so losing competitively priced access would directly squeeze the sector’s revenue.

On the other side are the US tech companies whose revenue the French tax trims by 3%. Washington is betting that a tariff threat is leverage to undo that tax before other EU members adopt it more widely. This is a textbook case of cross-sector retaliation: pressure on one country’s sector to protect another country’s sector, with neither of those two sectors being the source of the dispute.

Why wine and champagne specifically?

The choice of wine and champagne is not accidental. These are goods with a clear French identity, high political visibility and production concentrated in a few regions, so a tariff hits a precisely defined voter and business base in France. A similar pattern has appeared before in transatlantic disputes, when European agricultural and food products were singled out precisely for their symbolism and concentrated exports.

For now this is a threat made on camera, not a published tariff rate. Paris has committed to the 3% tax as part of its fiscal policy, and in earlier disputes the European Commission conducted trade negotiations at the level of the Union rather than individual member states. That means any actual tariff on French wine would raise the question of a response from the entire European Union, not just France. Is the 100% threat negotiating leverage ahead of the meeting with Macron, or a signal of a real tariff that would hit exports worth 9 billion euros?