Paris (AFP)

In the face of the risks of impending US retaliation, France warned on Monday that it would never "give up" its tax on the giants of the tech, and criticized the United States for not wanting a big international agreement on taxation digital.

"My message will be clear: we will never, never, never give up this will to tax the digital giants," French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire urged France Inter, raising his voice to the threats of Washington sanctions.

These statements come a few hours before the announcement by the US Trade Representative (USTR), Robert Lighthizer, the results of an impact survey on the French tax, which came into force this year, and retaliatory measures against Paris that he could advocate.

Faced with these threats, the Mayor criticized the United States to attack France to hide their intention to abandon the search for a global agreement on digital taxation in the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development (OECD).

"After calling for an international solution to the OECD, (Washington) is not sure of wanting it," he said. According to him, the administration of Donald Trump could thus "be content to impose sanctions on France which decided a national taxation".

The United States, where the behemoths such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook or Google have their headquarters, for several years barred an international agreement on the taxation of digital. But Washington had released the negotiations early this year and opened the way to the search for an international compromise.

- The return of a European tax?

For his part, Frenchman Thierry Breton, the new European Commissioner for the Single Market and Digital, has gone further and suggested that US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin could announce the withdrawal of the United States from the negotiations of the United States. OECD.

"I understood that we were going to have an answer probably from Mr. Mnuchin in the day telling us that finally it did not hold," he said on BFM Business, brandishing the threat of a European Union tax on the digital giants.

"If it does not hold, we will look at it at the European level," he said.

The idea of ​​a European tax on digital giants had failed a year ago, when four countries opposed, including Ireland, which hosts the headquarters of several GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) .

Other countries, such as Italy, Britain or Spain, have since announced their intention to tax the digital giants if an international agreement is not found at the OECD.

Faced with the impossibility of finding a European agreement, the French government had decided to apply this year a tax that should bring the State some 400 million euros, a very small sum compared to billions of profits that release GAFA.

At the G7 of Biarritz, at the end of August, France had announced an agreement in principle with the United States on this tax adopted on July 11 by the National Assembly.

Paris then undertook to abandon it as soon as an international solution was found under the auspices of the OECD.

Digital is just one of the fronts of the commercial stand-off that the Trump administration has engaged with several of its trading partners, including the European Union.

Washington has, for example, taken trade sanctions against various European products, in retaliation for subsidies granted to the European aircraft manufacturer Airbus, in accordance with a decision of the World Trade Organization.

In this context, the United States imposed 25% taxes on French wines, a move deemed "aggressive" by Paris.

The French tax creates a tax on large companies in the sector not on their profit, often consolidated in countries with very low taxes like Ireland, but on turnover.

© 2019 AFP