President Trump's tariffs threat tests EU's resolve to hurt Apple and Meta

By Samuel Stolton

  The European Union’s resolve to take on the might of Silicon Valley is set to be tested to the limit after Donald Trump threatened retaliation for fines that hurt some of America’s biggest companies. 

The US President warned last week that he’d strike back with heavy tariffs following any “disproportionate” penalties and said that the EU’s Digital Markets Act is in his crosshairs. 

 

His tough stance threatens to corner new EU competition chief Teresa Ribera, who’s risked her reputation by promising to wrap up investigations into Apple Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. by the end of March — with potentially eye-watering penalties should they fail to allay her concerns. 

 

If Ribera stands firm, the EU faces the president’s wrath. Give in and she risks fatally undermining landmark legislation aimed at reining in Big Tech.

 

“Throwing fines on top will only cause Trump to push back even harder,” said Kay Jebelli, senior director at the Chamber of Progress — a US trade group representing Amazon.com Inc., Meta, Apple and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. “Any fine would probably seem unjustified in the US administration’s eyes.”

 

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on what would be considered a disproportionate fine.

 

Publicly, the EU’s executive has pledged to respond “swiftly and decisively” to any retaliation to fines under the DMA and the Digital Services Act, a content-moderation law seen by the White House as a direct attack on freedom of speech. As the threats persist, European groups are urging Ribera and her EU tech commissioner counterpart Henna Virkkunen not to buckle. 

 

“Not enforcing these democratically created laws would undermine the rule of law and the legitimacy of the EU for decades,” said Felix Styma, chair of the Initiative for Neutral Search — a pan-European coalition representing competitors to Silicon Valley. “This may be the last chance the free world gets to rein into the digital monopolies.” 

 

The DMA was born out of frustration at the failure of traditional competition rules to change abusive behavior — despite some huge penalties, including over $8 billion in fines against Google and an order for Apple to pay Ireland back taxes of €13 billion ($13.6 billion).

 

Under the DMA, the EU has open cases into Apple, Meta and Google. While its probe into Google’s search business faces delays, the EU has powers to hit Apple and Meta with penalties as high as 10 per cent of global revenue.

 

While there are no legal deadlines for fines in the DSA, platforms risk penalties of up to 6 per cent for noncompliance. Elon Musk, currently carrying out a scorched-earth overhaul of the US government, and new Trump ally Mark Zuckerberg find their platforms under scrutiny — with probes into X, Facebook, and Instagram all underway.   

 

The 27-nation EU has flexibility in how it calculates those fines and could opt for levels that are much less threatening to Trump and Silicon Valley. That means one face-saving solution would be to avoid fines altogether.  

 

“The DMA and the DSA are now EU law and have to be applied,” said Assimakis Komninos, a partner at law firm White & Case who has represented Big Tech clients in the past. “But exorbitant fines just to make headlines do not help.”