French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire declared it.
France at the national level taxed digital concerns since 2019, if the European Union (EU) states do not agree on an EU-wide tax on digital sales, said French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Thursday.
EU finance ministers did not agree on a digital sales tax on Tuesday (December 4) despite the French-German plan to rescue it, according to which the tax should be reduced to companies like Google and Facebook.
“I set myself to reach a European tax deal for digital giants by March,” Le Maire told France 2. “If we fail, we will introduce it at national level from 2019 onwards,” he said. Tax refusal was a blow to French President Emmanuel Macron, whose government invested great political capital in it.
Tesla will start production of its cars in China in the second half of 2019
The step is to help Tesla, for example, because of higher import duties.
US electric car manufacturer Tesla launches partial production at its new plant in Shanghai, China, in the second half of next year. City officials said after Shanghai Mayor Jing Jung visited the Lin Kan area, which Tesla chose to build its first plant in China.
In July, CEO of Tesla Elon Musk signed a plant construction agreement in Shanghai with a production capacity of 500,000 vehicles a year. The first Tesla plant outside the US should help the electric car manufacturer avoid the adverse effects of importing cars into the Chinese market.
These include, for example, higher import duties. The decision of the Chinese government in April this year to cut the limit on foreign ownership of electric cars by the end of the year was facilitated by the company.
It is precisely for the current high import duties of US cars as a result of trade disputes with Washington Tesla that car prices first increased in July, but declined in November to lower their car prices in order to reduce demand. She said Model X and Model S car prices would be down 12% – 26% in China in order to make these vehicles “more affordable for customers” in the largest car market.
