Trump cancels U.S.-Canadian trade talks over tech taxes
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney meets with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House on May 6. Trump on Friday suspended trade talks due to Canada's new Digital Services Tax. File Photo by Francis Chung/UPI | License Photo
June 28 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump cited potential Canadian taxes on U.S. tech companies as his reason for ending trade talks with Canada on Friday.
The tech taxes on Amazon, Google, Meta and other U.S. tech firms are due on Monday, and Trump said it is a deal-breaker.
"We have just been informed that Canada ... has just announced that they are putting a Digital Services Tax on our American technology companies," Trump said in a Truth Social post on Friday.
He called the tax a "direct and blatant attack on our country" and accused Canada of "copying the European Union, which has done the same thing."
"We are hereby terminating all discussions on trade with Canada, effective immediately," Trump said.
His administration in the coming week will notify Canadian officials of the tariff that it will have to pay to do business in the United States, Trump added.
Trump last week attended the G7 economic trade summit hosted by Canada and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and sought common ground on trade talks, The Washington Post reported.
Officials at U.S. tech firms oppose the Canadian tax, the amount of which is based on the revenues generated by Canadians' use of e-commerce sites, social media and the sales of data.
All tech companies that generate more than $14.59 million from such services would be subject to the new 3% Digital Services Tax.
The tax is retroactive to 2022 and could cost U.S.-based tech firms up to $3 billion, NBC News reported.
Upon learning of Trump halting trade talks, Canadian officials on Friday limited U.S. steel imports and placed a 50% surcharge on steel imports that surpass the quota.
Canadian Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said the surcharge will help to protect Canadian steel against what he called "unjust U.S. tariffs."
He said the Canadian government is prepared to take additional actions, if necessary.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
UPI
7 minutes ago
- UPI
G-7 agrees to exclude U.S. companies from 15% minimum tax
Leaders of the G-7 nations pose for a photo in Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada, on Monday: (from left) Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, U.S. President Donald Trump, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The G-7 announced the U.S. would be excluded from the 15% minimum tax on American companies. Photo via G7/UPI | License Photo June 29 (UPI) -- Group of Seven nations agreed to exempt U.S. companies from a 15% minimum corporate tax rate, the countries said in a joint statement. The nonbinding deal was announced Saturday but still requires approval from the 38-member Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development that established the 2021 agreement on taxing companies. G-7 nations are part of the OECED. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had proposed a "side-by-side solution" for American-headquartered companies that would be exempt from the Income Inclusion Rule and Undertaxed Profits Rule "in recognition of the existing U.S. minimum tax rules to which they are subject." The massive spending bill now being considered in Congress originally included a "revenge tax" that would have imposed a levy of up to 20% on investments from countries that taxed U.S. companies. "I have asked the Senate and House to remove the Section 899 protective measure from consideration in the One, Big, Beautiful Bill," Bessent wrote in a multi-post thread on X on Thursday. The House has approved the massive legislation and the Senate is considering it. "It is an honorable compromise as it spares us from the automatic retaliations of Section 899 of the Big, Beautiful Bill," Italian Finance Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti told local media. "We are not claiming victory, but we obtained some concessions as the U.S. pledged to engage in OECD negotiations on fair taxation," an unnamed French official told Politico Europe. The official called the "revenge tax" a potentially "huge burden for French companies." Trump has criticized this provision because he said it would limit sovereignty and send U.S. tax revenues to other countries. "The Trump administration remains vigilant against all discriminatory and extraterritorial foreign taxes applied against Americans," Bessent wrote Thursday. Trump has imposed a July 9 deadline for U.S. trading partners to lower taxes on foreign goods, threatening high duties on the worst offenders, including 50% on goods from the 27 European Union members. In April, a baseline tariff was imposed on most U.S. trading partners, with higher rates on certain companies and products. In 2021, nearly 140 countries agreed to tax multinational companies at the 15% minimum, regardless of where they were headquartered. In late April, the European Union, Britain, Japan and Canada agreed to exempt the United States from the 15% minimum tax on companies. "Delivery of a side-by-side system will facilitate further progress to stabilize the international tax system, including a constructive dialogue on the taxation of the digital economy and on preserving the tax sovereignty of all countries," the joint statement read. The agreement, according to the statement, would ensure that any substantial risks identified "with respect to the level playing field, or risks of base erosion and profit shifting, are addressed to preserve the common policy objectives of the side-by-side system." The G-7 includes Britain, France, Germany, Italy in Europe, as well as Canada, Japan and U.S. Before 2014, the group was known as the G-8 until Russia was expelled after annexing the Crimea region of Ukraine. The chairs of the House and Senate committees responsible for tax policy cheered the agreement. "We applaud President Trump and his team for protecting the interests of American workers and businesses after years of congressional Republicans sounding the alarm on the Biden Administration's unilateral global tax surrender under Pillar 2," Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Missouri Rep. Jason Smith, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a press release. The agreement also, however, has its critics. "The U.S. is trying to exempt itself by arm-twisting others, which would make the tax deal entirely useless," Markus Meinzer, director of policy at the Tax Justice Network, told Politico Europe. "A ship with a U.S.-sized hole in its hull won't float."
New York Post
8 minutes ago
- New York Post
Trump says Republicans could miss July 4 deadline to pass ‘big beautiful' spending bill
President Trump is unsure whether Republicans will get his marquee One Big Beautiful Bill Act to his desk by the self-imposed Fourth of July deadline. 'I don't know. I mean, I can't tell you that,' Trump told Fox News' 'Sunday Morning Futures' in a pre-taped interview when asked about the timing of the bill's passage. 'I'd like to say, yes. But the problem is if we're two days late or five days late, everybody says, 'Oh, you had a tremendous failure.'' 'It's very important. If we don't have it, there's a 68% tax increase. If we have don't it, you know, the debt ceiling extension is very important,' he added. Trump revealed Sunday he's unsure if the 'big, beautiful bill' will be passed by July 4th. AP The One Big Beautiful Bill Act features Trump's legislative agenda, including the extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, bolstered border security, beefed-up defense spending, energy policy reforms, spending cuts and more. All of that is stuffed into one reconciliation bill to sidestep the 60-vote threshold needed to break a Democratic filibuster. The massive bill also increases the debt limit, ahead of the projected August to September debt ceiling deadline in which the US would run the risk of default. GOP leadership had publicly planned to put the megabill on Trump's desk by Independence Day. On Saturday evening, Senate Republicans advanced the mammoth agenda bill, kicking off the time-consuming procedural process to pass it. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has vowed to keep the upper chamber in town through the Fourth of July if needed to get the spending bill across the finish line. Despite starting the process, sharp divisions within the Senate GOP remain. Once it clears the Senate, it will then have to go through the House again before it can reach Trump's desk. One of the core divisions is over how much spending Republicans should cut. 'You also have to get elected. When you do cutting, you have to be a little bit careful, because people don't like necessarily cutting if they get used to something,' Trump said of the fiscal hawks demanding deeper cuts. 'And what I wanna do is do it through growth. We're gonna have growth like we've never seen before.' Despite starting the process, sharp divisions within the Senate GOP remain. REUTERS During his wide-ranging interview, Trump also spoke of how he plans to handle the $9 trillion US debt burden that is set to mature this year and faulted Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for not lowering rates. 'We're going turn it short term because we have a stupid person at the Fed if he would lower the rates,' Trump said of the looming debt obligation. 'But I don't want to have to pay for 10 years debt at a higher rate. 'And then we're to get somebody into the Fed who's going to be able to lower the rate.'
Politico
11 minutes ago
- Politico
Trump continues to project optimism that strikes on Iran ‘obliterated' its nuclear program
President Donald Trump is insisting that his strikes on Iran last week left the country's nuclear program 'obliterated like nobody's ever seen before,' even as the United Nations nuclear watchdog says Tehran could resume uranium enrichment 'in a matter of months.' Trump told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo he doesn't think the satellite images of trucks at two of the nuclear sites later hit by American pilots mean the country smuggled out much of its enriched uranium. 'No, I think,' he told Bartiromo in a pre-recorded interview that aired on 'Sunday Morning Futures.' 'First of all, it's very hard to do, it's very dangerous to do. It's very heavy, very very heavy. It's a very hard thing to do. Plus, we didn't give them much notice because they didn't know we were coming until just, you know, then. And nobody thought we'd go after that site because everybody said that site is impenetrable.' The White House has continued to promote its attacks on Iran's nuclear program as a complete victory. But the administration has not been able to provide convincing evidence, as experts caution that a definitive assessment on the strikes' impact could take weeks or even longer. In an interview that aired Sunday on CBS' 'Face the Nation,' the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said the damage to Iranian facilities wrought by the attacks was 'not total.' And without clarification about the whereabouts of the enriched uranium, 'this will continue to be hanging, you know, over our heads as a potential problem,' he said. But the president is projecting confidence. 'You know what they moved? Themselves,' Trump told Bartiromo. 'They were all trying to live. They didn't move anything. They didn't think it was going to be actually doable, what we did.' And Trump doesn't think Iran has any incentive to rebuild its beleaguered nuclear program as the country contemplates its future following a damaging war with Israel and a tentative ceasefire. 'The last thing they want to do right now is think about nuclear,' he said. 'They have to put themselves back into condition, in shape.' Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has long supported aggressive American action against Iran. But though he called the strikes on Iran 'a tremendous military success,' he said Sunday it was 'too early to tell' if Iran would ultimately abandon its ambitions to become a nuclear power. 'The question for the world: Does the regime still desire to make a nuclear weapon? The answer is yes. Do they still desire to destroy Israel and come after us? The answer is yes,' he said on ABC's 'This Week.'
