That makes me smart,” Donald Trump once boasted from a campaign stage, referring to accusations that he had dodged tax payments for years. Now, the tech bros with whom he surrounds himself may well benefit from the president’s “smart” disdain for paying tax – to the enormous cost of the British public.
The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, seems intent on scrapping the digital services tax (DST) – a 2 per cent levy on Big Tech companies such as Meta (which owns Facebook), Alphabet (which owns Google) and Amazon – in a craven attempt to mollify Trump and dodge a tariff-beating.
Trump has been an opponent of the DST since his previous term in office, saying it unfairly penalises US firms. (In reality, they pay not because they’re American, but because they generate the most money.)
Reeves is in a very difficult position. Further US tariffs would just about finish off all attempts to get blood pumping around our anaemic economy. But to abandon the DST seems an utterly pathetic submission to the rampaging broligarchy holding sway in Washington.
The move would cost Britain around £800m annually – at a time when support for the elderly and disabled is being stripped away. It will also disadvantage British shop owners, who struggle to compete with the likes of Amazon.
And then there’s the impact on the media. The biggest information traders of our times – Meta and Alphabet – would become richer under the exemption, giving them an unfair advantage over British news publishers, which continue to be starved of search prominence and ad revenue. Removing the DST would also embolden the tech bros in their belief that the rules nation states enforce to protect their citizens do not apply to them.
Avoidance of taxes and regulation is inherent in their business models, and Trump – with the threat of tariffs – is helping their global march. The president has announced tariffs on EU countries, to come into force on 2 April, in response to the EU’s Digital Markets Act. On 19 March the European Commission accused Google and Apple of being in breach of the act.
Australia, too, is waiting to hear if it will be hit by tariffs over its new rules around competition and online safety.
The UK is capitulating too early. There is no stomach for a fight. We have, as was so often warned in the earliest days of the Trump administration, obeyed in advance. Asked repeatedly if the tax would be scrapped, Reeves would only say: “We are having discussions with the US.”
She added: “Well, it’s the right thing that companies who operate in the UK pay their taxes in the UK, and the United States government and tech companies understand that as well.”
The first clause of that sentence may be absolutely correct. But even Reeves must admit that the second is utterly delusional.
As a journalist you can sometimes spend weeks and months meeting contacts, prising out information, double-sourcing facts, scouring public records and door-stepping witnesses for one small story no one notices. And sometimes you get added to a group chat in which the American vice-president and secretary of state are discussing war plans. How’s the luck of the Atlantic’s editor, Jeffrey Goldberg?
[See also: What the Signal group chat really revealed about Trump’s team]
In breakfast scenes rarely seen since those windswept mornings on the Dallas Southfork veranda where JR Ewing glowered across the orange juice at Bobby, it seems power and politics are at play on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
The Telegraph reports that the veteran presenter Nick Robinson has only co-hosted with Emma Barnett 13 times since she joined a year ago – their last joint appearance being around three months ago. There is talk of “tension”, “clashing egos” and a lack of on-air “chemistry”. It’s a new spin on last year’s story that Barnett was rarely on air with Mishal Husain.
Obviously, this has nothing to do with the newsroom mundanities of running a rota, and everything to do with the arrival of a confident female presenter who isn’t scared to ask for her share of the cornflakes.
Elon Musk’s self-styled role as global champion of free speech hit a hurdle this week when his X platform took down dozens of accounts belonging to political protesters in Turkey.
It comes after the arrests of Ekrem İmamoğlu, the popular Istanbul mayor and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main rival for the presidency, and over 1,000 demonstrators. This is the same Erdoğan who weeks ago Trump called, “a friend of mine. He’s a guy I like, respect… And he’s a very smart guy.”
X has condemned the Turkish government’s demand to suspend more than 700 accounts, and said it will fight the decision in court. But in other, similar situations, X has refused to block accounts until the end of the court fight, rather than pre-emptively.
Musk will be mindful of the ban and $5m bill X faced following a similar stand-off in Brazil. But he is also surely mindful of keeping his boss in the White House happy. X has already become an arm of US foreign policy, with Musk’s attacks on the UK and Europe. Might what is unfolding on X in Turkey be another outworking of that new reality?
[See also: Rachel Reeves’ fraught balancing act]
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This article appears in the 26 Mar 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Putin’s Endgame