USTR May List Tariff Targets in France, but Unlikely to Hike Duties in December, Experts Say

Trade observers don't think that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative will announce new tariffs on French products on Dec. 2, when it is scheduled to release a report on France's Digital Services Tax (see 1911270047), but there may be a list of potential targets for the future. Although the tax passed the French legislature in July, it has not been levied while U.S. and French authorities negotiate, and while the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development works on a global approach to taxing companies like Google, Facebook and others.

Sean Miner, an international trade and customs associate at KPMG, said on Twitter that he projects “that USTR will publish a proposed list of products to target for 301 tariffs, as a deterrent to France implementing the DST. That way the US will be ready to fire if France implements the DST.” When asked whether the same goods that have higher tariffs because of the Airbus dispute would be on the list again, but at yet higher tariffs, he replied, “I would think they need to go big and broad (new products) because the US sees DST as a big threat and the US will want to be armed with a lot of potential firepower.”

An international tax policy professor at Georgetown, Itai Grinberg, told reporters at The New York Times: “Absent some sort of intervention from the president, it seems very unlikely for the United States to act on the 301 investigation prior to seeing whether there is a satisfactory agreement at the O.E.C.D. in January 2020, and if such an agreement is reached, whether the French keep their promise and repeal their digital services tax.”