US treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin (pictured) has written to Rishi Sunak and the finance ministers of France, Italy and Spain telling them that negotiations for a global digital services tax have reached an impasse.

“As we have repeatedly said, if countries choose to collect or adopt such taxes, the United States will respond with appropriate commensurate measures,” wrote Mnuchin.

It is said that talks about the proposed tax have been suspended and that Mnuchin said that there was no chance of even a temporary tax.

“We were making no headway and the Secretary made the decision that rather than have them go off on their own, you would just say we’re no longer involved in the negotiations,” said US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer during a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Lighthizer two weeks ago initiated investigations into whether digital services taxes being considered by Austria, Brazil, the Czech Republic, the EU, India, Indonesia, Italy, Spain, Turkey and UK were unfair trade practices

The idea of a global tax was put forward by the OECD.

When France tried to go it alone with a digital services tax it was threatened with 100% retaliatory tariffs on wine and handbags which made it back off.

The US thinks the proposed tax is unfair to it because the US digital services companies are the biggest in the world.