US President Donald Trump defended American tech giants while meeting French President Emmanuel Macron in London. Trump railed against France’s new digital tax which targets the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple.
“They’re American companies. They’re tech companies. They’re not my favourite people, but that’s OK, I don’t care, they’re American companies. And we want to tax American companies. It’s not for somebody else to tax them,” Trump said.
RT’s Boom Bust talks to Hilary Fordwich of the British-American Business Association about the details of the tech tax which is driving the escalation of tensions.
The tech companies are exceptionally biased, they are obviously anti-Trump, she says, adding: “So, I think it’s rather magnanimous of him (Trump) for once, and we don’t often get to say that.”
The tax is definitely a hit on American companies, according to Fordwich. The sentiment in France “is that these are the terrible American companies.”
The crux of the issue “is dire circumstances that French President Emmanuel Macron finds himself in. He is not popular at home; he has about a 62 percent disapproval rating,” Fordwich says.“So, what he has to do, he needs to find an external enemy. And who’s better to look at to tax than an American tech company.”
She added that 63.4 percent of all of the global unicorns (big tech companies) are US companies.
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