Trump threatens fresh EU tariffs after $1 billion Google antitrust fine

Trump said Washington would launch a Section 301 trade investigation into EU after regulators imposed antitrust fine on Google, calling the penalties discriminatory against US technology firms

By Jeff Mason

 

President Donald Trump threatened new tariffs on goods from the European Union in retaliation for a $1 billion (€890 million) fine of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, injecting fresh uncertainty into the two sides’ trade relationship just as the worst of the strain appeared to be over for now. 

Trump said the US would launch a trade investigation “into the practice of ‘ROBBING’ American Companies and, in turn, the American Taxpayer.” He invoked Section 301 of the Trade Act, which relates to unfair trade practices and has become his favored legal authority to restore tariffs struck down earlier this year by the Supreme Court.

 

“The penalties will be entirely reversed and, we anticipate, a substantial TARIFF to be placed on them at the earliest possible moment,” Trump posted. 

 

Trump has long complained about EU regulation of American technology giants, complaining it treats those companies unfairly. In his post, the president criticized similar actions against Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., calling the fines an “illegal and highly discriminatory practice.”

 

The threat scrambles US trade relations afresh less than 24 hours after the Trump administration announced it was imposing duties of at least 10 per cent on products from around 60 trading partners, including the EU, citing the desire to limit goods made with forced labor.

 

Some governments had shrugged off those duties because the tariff rate was mostly unchanged from levels under a stop-gap measure in place since February, when the Supreme Court declared others illegal. The temporary 10 per cent import tax expired Friday.

 

Legal challenges have already been coming in from the forced labor tariff announcement. Later Friday, two small businesses filed a lawsuit in the US Court of International Trade accusing Trump and US officials of unlawfully using Section 301 to try to replace the earlier rounds of tariffs.

 

Tech giants 

The EU on Thursday imposed its fine on Google for violating the bloc’s Digital Markets Act, saying the company had unfairly favored its own search services and prevented app developers from steering consumers to offers outside its Play Store. 

 

In a statement, Google said it had “expressed our concerns about the impact of recent EC decisions, and we appreciate engagement by the administration and US government.”

 

Trump has frequently made tariff threats against the US’s largest trading partners, and has followed through on some of them while retreating from others. Launching a new probe into EU tech fines would take months, though Trump could turn to a dormant 301 investigation into European digital services taxes from his first term. 

“That changes the conversation — it’s disappointing,”  Ireland’s Ambassador to the US Geraldine Byrne Nason said in an interview on Bloomberg Television of Trump’s Friday announcement. Of the US Trade Representative’s earlier tariff decision, she had said Europe had welcomed it as “good news.”

 

The US and EU struck an agreement last year that capped American tariffs on most imports from the bloc at 15 per cent. 

 

“We do not discriminate,” Byrne said of the fine against Google. “We have no qualms and we will hopefully get to a dialogue and to discuss what the president means by this.”