Paris hopes 'still room for discussion' on US tariffs

France believes there is still time to avert President Donald Trump's threat to slap tariffs on USD 2.4 billion in French merchandise in a dispute over a new digital services tax, a senior French official said Tuesday.

Ahead of a NATO summit in London, Trump on Monday unveiled plans for import duties of up to 100 per cent on French goods like Roquefort cheese as soon as mid-January, retaliating for a French digital tax which US officials say unfairly penalises tech giants like Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon.

"We hope is that there is still room for discussion and for consultation and that this is not the end of the story," Cedric O, France's secretary of state for digital economy, told AFP.

"We have to explain and to convince them that first this is not a discriminatory tax, this is a tax that is supposed to tax every company that has a digital business model, be it an American, Chinese or European company."