Trump to UK: Stop taxing our big beautiful tech corps or face tariff tsunami
Oval Office resident rants about Blighty's Digital Services Tax with threats that don’t quite add up
Donald Trump has threatened to whack the UK with a "big tariff" if it doesn't scrap its tax on large US tech firms, reviving a long-running spat over who gets to skim the proceeds from Silicon Valley's global empire.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Trump took aim at the UK's Digital Services Tax in a lengthy, free-flowing riff that wandered its way to tariffs.
"We don't like it when they target American companies. Because basically you're talking about our great American companies, and whether we like those companies or don't like them, they're American companies, and they're the top companies in the world," he said.
"The UK did it, and a couple of other countries did it, and they think they're going to make an easy buck. That's why they've all taken advantage of our country. They don't take advantage of it. No, we've been looking at it, and we can meet that very easily by just putting a big tariff on the UK, so they better be careful. If they don't drop the tax, we'll probably put a big tariff on the UK."
It is a familiar stream: repetition, detours, a mid-sentence change of direction, the odd lapse in coherence, and a conclusion that arrives more by momentum than logic.
The Digital Services Tax is not some smash-and-grab on "great American companies." It is a 2 percent levy on the UK revenues of the largest online platforms, targeting search engines and social media firms that make money from British users. It only applies once companies are already massive, with global revenues above £500 million, so this is very much a Big Tech problem, not a plucky startup tax.
Put simply, it is aimed at companies making money from UK users while booking much of the profit elsewhere.
It's also not quite the "easy buck" being claimed: the levy raised roughly £800 million last year from firms including Amazon, Google, Meta, eBay, and TikTok.
The UK isn't going this alone, either. A growing list of countries has rolled out their own digital services taxes while global talks, led by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, grind on. Around a dozen countries already have digital services taxes in force, and roughly half of Europe's OECD members have either proposed or implemented one, with more lining up behind them.
That wider push has been winding up Donald Trump for months, who has been warning that any country taxing US tech firms could face tariffs or worse. As far back as last summer, he was threatening trade measures against anyone he reckoned was "discriminating" against Silicon Valley.
Which brings us to the small matter of how that would actually play out. Tariffs hit imports, not governments, and the cost usually gets passed on. This would not dent the UK Treasury. It would push up prices.
If anything, this pushes Europe further the other way. Digital sovereignty is already the direction of travel, and if American readers are wondering why, threats like this are a decent place to start.