Report from Bloomberg
In Brief – US President Donald Trump blasted European Union regulators in his address to attendees of the World Economic Forum annual conference in Davos, Switzerland, which he delivered by video just four days after his inauguration to start his second term in the White House. In response to a question that was critical about the level and intrusiveness of European regulations, Trump raised European Commission “court cases” targeting Apple, Google, and Meta, in particular the $15 billion verdict against Apple and Ireland that accused the Irish of giving the iPhone giant unfair tax breaks and demanded that the back-taxes be paid to the national government. Apple has also been hit with a $2 billion antitrust fine for its app store policies imposed on music streaming competitors like Spotify, while Google has received nearly ten billion dollars in antitrust penalties, and Meta has been hit with billions in data policy penalties. The President wrapped up his comments on the European actions targeting the tech giants saying, “These are American companies. Whether you like them or not, they’re — they’re American companies, and they shouldn’t be doing that. And that’s — as far as I’m concerned, it’s a form of taxation. So, we have some very big complaints with the EU.”
Context – Trump often said in the run-up to last November’s Election Day that top tech CEOs from companies like Apple and Google were reaching out to him to complain about unfair treatment in Europe, using language very much like his Davos talk. His long running love-hate relationship Big Tech includes claims that he defended companies like Google from French Digital Services Taxes despite being treated unfairly in search results. “I have to protect American companies whether I like them or not, some I might not even like.” Now, among his slew of first day executive orders, was one pulling the US out of the global tax deal President Biden negotiated on digital taxes and threatening trade retaliation. And unlike during his first term, he enters his second with top digital giants facing new EU regulatory regimes and sidling up to him as allies.