EU Comes to DC, Meets with Trump Tech Officials and Trashes Them
By Paul Steidler: Last week, a delegation of seven European Parliament members met with numerous officials of the Trump Administration – and wasted no time publicly trashing them.
The delegation was led by Anna Cavazzini, chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection. She is a member of Germany’s Greens Party.
Ms. Cavazzini and her colleagues met with Members of Congress, including House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy representatives, the State Department, the Federal Trade Commission, and numerous tech stakeholders.
In a February 28 news release, Ms. Cavazzini said, “We have witnessed aggressive communication by U.S. lawmakers and the Trump Administration targeting our (the EU’s) tech regulation.” She went on to say that in subsequent “discussions with civil society and business representatives, it became clear that these attacks are far from representative of the views of the majority of stakeholders.”
A U.S. civics lesson for Ms. Cavazzini: the U.S. is a democracy, and the representative of the people, as so recently determined by the people, is President Donald Trump and those who he hires. Stakeholders are secondary.
Ms. Cavazzini went on to trash the U.S. legal system as “toothless,” criticized the new Administration’s AI safety policy, and threatened that the EU would become more hostile to U.S. tech businesses if the Trump Administration does not back off.
Since taking office, President Trump has repeatedly, and appropriately, been critical of the EU’s unfair treatment of U.S. tech companies, as was Vice President J.D. Vance during a trip to Europe. On February 21, President Trump issued an executive order that takes strong issue with the EU’s use of digital service taxes against U.S. companies.
These are implemented via contorted laws, such as the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, that attack U.S. tech companies who have achieved success and popularity with consumers that no European company has.
Ms. Cavazzini and her colleagues’ visit and the press release are audacious. But these acts also do not serve the people of Europe well, who live in a tech wasteland with onerous regulations throughout, as former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi has been emphasizing.
To prosper, Europe needs to become more like the U.S. Finding common, respectful ground with President Trump and his administration would be a good start.