the Administration trump announced additional duties of 25% on French cosmetics, bags and other import goods worth 1.3 billion US dollars in response to a tax on the American digital services in France. When it became known that Washington will refrain from implementing this step for up to 180 days.
Office of the U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer said that the postponement of the introduction of tariffs would give extra time to resolve this issue, including through discussions in the Organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD).
Paris also agreed to postpone the introduction of its three-percent tax on digital services, Reuters reports. Earlier negotiations of representatives of the two countries with the mediation of the OECD to develop a multilateral solution for the taxation of digital services yielded no results, and they are further complicated by the pandemic of coronavirus.
the Actions of the White house has followed the completion of the investigation on the so-called section 301 of the United States, which had concluded that the French tax policy directed against American technology companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple Inc. France and other countries, experts say, consider the taxes on digital services as a way of increasing revenue from the local operations of large technology companies in the U.S., which, according to French officials, get a huge profit on local markets, while making only limited contributions to the state Treasury.
the United States launched a similar investigation with respect to taxes on digital services, which have been taken or are being considered in ten other countries, including the UK, India and Turkey. In June, the US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin caught unawares European countries, when they proposed to suspend the negotiations in the OECD, given the lack of progress in this area. The representative of the European Union earlier told the news Agency that Brussels can offer its own solution if the negotiations do not lead to reaching an agreement. He urged Washington to resume negotiations.
