Washington has threatened Paris with $ 2.4 billion worth of goods in response to the digital tax. According to international expert Dmitry Ofitserov-Belsky, the parties have long had mutual economic claims against each other.
The United States may introduce duties at a rate of up to 100% on French goods of up to $ 2.4 billion in response to the discriminatory policies of Paris against American digital companies.
In mid-July, the French parliament passed a service tax law for major digital companies such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. This law has been criticized by the United States. The US President Donald Trump then threatened to introduce a tax on French wine. The US sales spokesman said he had “completed the first part of the investigation” on the French digital tax, and concluded that it was “discriminatory against the US companies”. As a response, the US is considering the introduction of duties.
“The decision of the sales representative sends a clear signal that the US will take action against digital tax regimes that discriminate against the US companies. The US sales representative is focused on countering the growing protectionism of EU countries that are unfair to US companies – whether through digital taxes or other efforts against leading US digital companies”, – the report said.
Dmitry Ofitserov-Belsky, an international expert, senior researcher at IMEMO RAS, commented on the situation.
“Mutual claims of the economic plan for both sides were long ago, and very serious. The USA, for example, fined very large amounts of French banks for not participating in sanctions against several countries. Google has already been fined in Europe. That is, such a confrontation it’s gone before, and now it has a chance to grow into something more. France now advocates that the European members of the North Atlantic Alliance focus more on European arms manufacturers, rather than American ones. So, we see Actually, the economic confrontation will expand. Alliance to discord is different. There are issues in which such a struggle is already the norm”, – said Dmitry Ofitserov-Belsky.
In October, the United States introduced 10% duties on aircraft and 25% on agricultural and industrial products from the EU based on the verdict of the WTO Dispute Resolution Authority. This was done as part of the compensation for US damage caused by the European Union due to subsidies of Airbus. European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström stated in response that the European Commission will fight to the end to persuade the United States not to introduce trade measures against the EU in the Airbus case.