The White House says Canada’s Carney “hits” Trump in the technical tax

The White House said Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney “submission” to President Donald Trump to remove taxes on large U.S. technology companies.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday that Canada had made a mistake in trying to collect taxes, and Carney called Trump on Sunday night saying he would throw it away.

The two countries have been fighting for trade since Trump returned to office. In response to what he called a “blatant attack”, Trump summoned trade deal talks on Friday and threatened to raise tariffs.

Canada then said it would stop collecting Monday payments and introduce legislation to eliminate taxes.

“President Trump knows how to negotiate, he knows he is managing the best country and the best economy in the world,” Levitt said in response to a reporter’s question.

“Every country on the planet needs to have a good relationship with the United States,” she said, saying taxes “a huge victory for our tech companies and our workers at home.”

Canada’s Digital Services Tax (DST) will mean US tech giants including Amazon, dollar, Google and Apple have a revenue of 3% of Canada’s revenue of more than 20 million (£15 million).

Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne issued a statement on Sunday saying the tax would be cancelled.

“DST announced in 2020 to address the fact that many of the large technology companies operating in Canada may not pay taxes on the income generated by Canadians,” he said.

“Canadian preference has always been a multilateral agreement related to digital service tax,” the statement added.

Canadian opposition Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre criticized the removal of taxes in the 11th hour.

In an article on X, he said the Prime Minister “put down his elbow” – referring to the phrase “elbow” used by Carney and his Liberal Party when they ran for the election in April this year, indicating that they are ready to defend Canadian interests in the interests of the United States.

Poilievre urged Carney to “stand that the United States will immediately lift cork timber tariffs”, adding: “We need to make a profit for our workers in these speeches.”

Many countries, including the UK, are changing the way they tax large multinational technology companies with millions of customers and advertisers around the world, but due to the structure of their businesses, senior corporate tax bills.

It is estimated that the tax in Canada will put the tech giants at a tax rate of more than CAD 20 billion (US$1.5 billion; £1.06 billion) as the tax was filed retrospectively in January 2022.

Last year’s federal budget estimates that the tax will receive a total of $5.9 billion over the next five years.