The Trump administration is proposing tariffs on up to $2.4 billion worth of French imports — including Roquefort cheese, handbags, lipstick and sparkling wine — in retaliation for France’s tax on American tech giants like Google, Amazon and Facebook. The French tax is designed to prevent tech companies from dodging taxes by putting headquarters in low-tax European Union countries. It imposes a 3% annual levy on French revenues of digital companies with yearly global sales worth more than $830 million and French revenue exceeding $27 million. The U.S. also criticized the French tax for targeting companies’ revenue, not their profits, and for being retroactive. The U.S. is already readying tariffs on $7.5 billion in EU imports over illegal subsidies for the European aircraft giant Airbus.

Source: Los Angeles Times December 03, 2019 05:37 UTC