U.S. Ups the Ante Over EU Attacks on American Tech Businesses

By Paul Steidler: Talk about some hard-edge follow-through.

On Friday, February 21, President Trump signed an Executive Order directing the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to investigate countries that use digital service taxes (DSTs) to discriminate against U.S. companies. The executive order says, “Regulations that dictate how American companies interact with consumers in the European Union, like the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, will face scrutiny.”

The Administration regards these and other European Union (EU) acts as “forms of unfair fines, practices, and penalties that undermine the ability of American companies to operate as intended and force them to incur additional compliance costs, lowering U.S. global economic competitiveness.”

This follows J.D. Vance’s February 11 speech at the AI Action Summit in Paris warning the European Commission to cease and desist from using laws like these to attack U.S. tech companies. On January 23, President Trump addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos and warned that the EU’s practices are a form of taxation that will not be tolerated, concluding, “So, we have some very big complaints with the EU.”

The U.S. House of Representatives is also jumping into the fray. On February 23, Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan and Congressman Scott Fitzgerald, Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust, sent a strong letter to the EU’s chief antitrust official. The Members of Congress want to know the extent to which various EU laws “are being used to discriminate against innovative American companies and insulate their European rivals from competition.” They demand a response by March 10. 

For years, the EU has treated America’s Big Tech companies as a piggy bank. Clearly, that practice will no longer be tolerated.