August 25, 2019 / By mobanmarket
It's been a good day for the president at the G-7 summit.
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President Donald Trump summed up his first day of meetings in a Friday night tweet, touting the "progress being made."
"France and President Emmanuel Mcron have done a really great job thus far witha very important G-7," he tweeted.
"Lunch with Emmanuel was the best meeting we have yet had. Likewise, evening meeting with World Leaders went very well. Progress being made!"
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Macron, while meeting with President Trump during the G-7 summit, defended the nation’s new tax law, which targets big U.S. technology companies like Amazon and Google.
During a 2-hour working lunch with Trump — who has threatened to retaliate against the proposal by slapping tariffs on French products — Macron tried to stress that the tax is not an anti-American policy, according to the Associated Press, citing an official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Macron stressed the importance for every country to be able to tax digital activities. Trump repeatedly vowed to respond by placing an import duty on French wine imports to the U.S.
According to the French diplomat, Macron told Trump there was no link between the digital tax and the wine tariffs, trying to convince him there was no point in opening a trade war on that issue.
Ahead of the meeting, President of the European Council Donald Tusk said the European Union is prepared to stand by France if Trump moves forward with his threat to slap an import duty on French wines.
“I will protect French wine with genuine determination for many reasons,” Tusk said, adding, “The EU stands by France. If the U.S. imposes tariffs on France, the EU will respond in kind.”
At the end of July, French President Emmanuel Macron signed the digital services tax, a 3 percent tax that targets companies worth at least 750 million euros ($834 million) globally and 25 million euros in France. It will be retroactively applied from early 2019 and is expected to generate up to 400 million euros per year.
Trade was front-and-center during the summit in Biarritz, France.
Earlier in the day, while en-route to the summit, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson weighed in on the escalating trade war between the U.S. and China, calling on both nations to remove the billions of dollars worth of tariffs.
“This is not the way to proceed,” Johnson told reporters, according to the Guardian. “Apart from anything else, those who support the tariffs are at risk of incurring the blame for the downturn in the global economy, irrespective of whether that is true.”
“I want to see an opening up of global trade, I want to see a dialing down of tensions, and I want to see tariffs come off,” he added.
Tensions between the world’s two largest economies increased on Friday when Trump retaliated against Beijing for its decision to raise tariffs on U.S. goods by sharply increasing the import duty on Chinese products beginning Oct. 1.
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