- Trump has hit out against EU fines against US companies
- The new President has said that the fines are “a form of taxation”
- Apple, Meta, and Google are all currently facing large EU fines
Following Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plea to newly inaugurated President Trump to stop US companies from paying European Union fines, Trump has lashed out at the bloc, branding the fines as “a form of taxation.”
Meta has faced $2.67 billion in General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) fines alone since 2022 for a number of reasons, including failing to ensure information security, not having a legal basis for data processing and general non-compliance with GDPR.
GDPR was introduced to the EU in 2018 and is designed to give EU citizens more control over what data can be collected, who can process their data, and ensuring it remains secure when processed outside of the EU.
“Big complaints with the EU”
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump said (via Bloomberg), “These are American companies whether you like it or not. They shouldn’t be doing that. That’s, as far as I’m concerned, a form of taxation. We have some very big complaints with the EU.”
Many of the world’s richest men and owners of tech conglomerates, including Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Tim Cook were in attendance at Trump’s inauguration, with all of the aforementioned donating seven figure sums to Trump’s inauguration fund. Elon Musk, owner of X (formerly Twitter), reportedly spent upwards of $277 million to help get Trump elected.
Apple, Meta, and Google have all faced large fines for violating EU regulations in the past, with the European Commission today completing an initial probe into X with a fine in the million dollar region likely to be levied against the social media platform.
In 2023, Meta was hit by a $1.3 billion fine for transferring EU user data to the US. Google had to pay a $1.6 billion fine for anti-competitive policies in 2019. Apple faced a $2 billion fine for abusing the app store to limit music streaming services from competing with Apple Music.
All three companies are currently facing EU’s Digital Markets Act investigations, with violations resulting in a fine as high as 10% of global annual revenue. It is worth noting that the US has no comprehensive federal data privacy regulation, with only 20 US states currently enforcing a state-level regulation for data protection.
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