Trump Bullied Canada Over 'Digital Taxes'

[Passages]

Joseph Stiglitz

The Guardian July 8, 2025

The question now: will countries cave in to these threats or stick together and collect the billions they are rightly owed?

Donald Trump’s announcement calling off trade talks with Canada over its digital tax – and that he would impose retaliatory tariffs – demonstrates, once again, not only the president’s ignorance of economics and willful disregard of international norms and the rule of law, but also his willingness to use brute power to get whatever he and the oligarchs who support him want.

He was wrong in labeling the tax as outrageous and “a direct and blatant attack on our country”. It is actually an efficient tax, well designed to ensure that the technology companies – the profits of which benefit the tech oligarchs who have come to dominate US policy – pay their fair share of taxes.

It is accordingly disappointing that Canada appears to have caved, even more so as the prime minister had stood up strongly against Trump’s demand for Canada to become the 51st state. Regrettably, others are giving in – New Zealand and India have reportedly retreated.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/08/trump-bullied-canada-over-digital-taxes-and-ottawa-submitted

Bio: Joseph E. Stiglitz is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is also the co-chair of the High-Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress at the OECD, and the Chief Economist of the Roosevelt Institute. Stiglitz was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001 and the John Bates Clark Medal in 1979. He is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank and a former chair of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers.

In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. In 2011 Stiglitz was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Known for his pioneering work on asymmetric information, Stiglitz's research focuses on income distribution, climate change, corporate governance, public policy, macroeconomics and globalization. He is the author of numerous books including, most recently, People, Power, and Profits, Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy, and Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited.
https://business.columbia.edu/stiglitz/about