The German finance minister said he isn't pessimistic over threats of tariffs on the car industry as he believes an agreement on free trade and digital taxes is possible.

Soon after calling for a fresh trade deal with the European Union, President Donald Trump raised the specter of car tariffs should European nations implement a digital tax on big U.S. tech firms.

Trump's comments align with a similar warning from U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who said on CNBC panel in Davos this week that tariffs could come if EU members don't back off from their digital tax plans.

"If people want to arbitrarily put taxes on our digital companies, we will consider putting taxes arbitrarily on car companies," Mnuchin said Wednesday.

But speaking at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland on Thursday, Germany's Olaf Scholz told CNBC's Geoff Cutmore that he believes a free trade agreement with the United States will happen and he wasn't gloomy about the threat of tariffs.

"No, not really. I think we know that there is a need for debating about trade," said Scholz, adding that people "could be confident" that EU proposals currently on the table would lead to a deal.

"In the end, we know that trade is most successful if there are not too many barriers," he added.

Scholz said the digital tax, which would impact companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook, should be agreed globally and he expected an international proposal to come from the OECD in early 2020.

Countries have argued that current rules do not fairly match where digital profits are taxed, to the region where the income is derived. The OECD is currently working on a plan to introduce a multilateral solution which would come into play, replacing any individual taxes by different nations.