(Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Thursday said he planned to impose tariffs on Canada and France over their digital services taxes on U.S. technology giants, which has been a long-standing irritant.
Canada, seeking to address the challenge of taxing digital giants like Google parent Alphabet and Amazon.com that can book their profits in low-tax countries, began imposing the tax in June last year.
Trump tasked his economics team on Thursday with devising a plan to impose reciprocal tariffs on every country that levied duties on U.S. imports.
A White House fact sheet, stating that “only America should be allowed to tax American firms,” complained Canada and France used digital services taxes to each collect over $500 million per year from U.S. companies.
“Overall, these non-reciprocal taxes cost America’s firms over $2 billion per year. Reciprocal tariffs will bring back fairness and prosperity to the distorted international trade system and stop Americans from being taken advantage of,” said the fact sheet. It gave no further details.
Last year, under the previous Biden administration, Washington requested trade dispute settlement consultations with Canada over the tax, calling it discriminatory.
The office of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Alistair Bell)
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