The Trump administration today issued a warning that the U.S. may strike back against European service providers for what it called “discriminatory” actions against U.S. Big Tech.
“If the EU and EU Member States insist on continuing to restrict, limit, and deter the competitiveness of U.S. service providers through discriminatory means, the United States will have no choice but to begin using every tool at its disposal to counter these unreasonable measures,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer posted on X.
Elon Musk’s X Corp. was fined about $140 million earlier this month for violating the bloc’s strict Digital Services Act, DSA. “Europe has to be very careful,” Trump later warned. DSA, and the General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR, have led to threats and fines in what Europe calls an effort to rein in the “Wild West” of U.S. Big Tech. The bloc has leveled numerous fines, some hefty, against the likes of Apple Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Google LLC.
“In stark contrast, EU service providers have been able to operate freely in the United States for decades, benefitting from access to our market and consumers on a level playing field,” wrote Greer. He listed a number of EU firms that could soon find themselves under the U.S. cudgel, with the names including Accenture plc, Amadeus IT Group, S.A., Capgemini SE, DHL International GmbH, Mistral AI SAS, Publicis Groupe SA, SAP SE, Siemens AG, and Spotify Technology S.A.
Greer threatened that if the EU insisted “on continuing to restrict, limit, and deter the competitiveness of U.S. service providers through discriminatory means,” the U.S. would unleash “every tool at its disposal” to hurt those firms. He added that if any other nations adopt an “EU-style strategy” against U.S. firms, they will meet with the same response.
The EU pushed back, issuing a statement saying its laws “apply equally and fairly to all companies operating in the EU.” Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier added that the bloc’s regulations are in place to ensure “a safe, fair and level playing field in the EU, in line with the expectations of our citizens.” He denied that there had been any “discrimination.”
The EU recently agreed to dial back some of its legislation around artificial intelligence after the Trump administration and U.S. tech giants stated their frustration with such laws. Despite that, the White House has been highly critical of the EU of late, recently contending that the bloc faces “civilization erasure” due to its immigration policies. The same national security document said, “We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.”
Photo: Unsplash
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