The EU’s regulatory campaign against Big Tech has set its enforcers on a collision course with the US under Donald Trump's incoming “America first” administration. EU cases against Apple, Google and X are well advanced, but a new batch of commissioners faces a momentous choice over how aggressively to wield the bloc’s cherished digital competition principles in the face of Trump's hard realpolitik.
The EU has spent the best part of 15 years gradually turning up the heat on US tech giants. While attention used to be on an isolated monopolist such as Microsoft or Google, today at least five US tech giants are all at advanced stages of regulatory scrutiny across a whole range of business lines. But with Donald Trump headed to the White House, the newly inaugurated European Commission faces a tricky call: to fine or not to fine?
If officials under the new antitrust and digital commissioners — Teresa Ribera and Henna Virkkunen — pursue these probes to their natural end, it could involve billions of euros in fines. This will likely rile the new US administration and potentially trigger painful retaliation.
The most politically sensitive case may be against X, owned by Trump cheerleader Elon Musk, who has spent millions of dollars on his friend’s re-election and joined his team to cut government spending. Meanwhile, a probe into Apple’s suspected non-compliance is at an advanced stage, with officials starting to crunch numbers on potential fines.
Will Virkkunen have the courage to fine Musk’s X over the Digital Services Act, knowing that the consequences of sanctioning Trump’s chief confidant could be as significant as they are hard to predict?
Equally, will Ribera want to fine Apple potentially billions of euros for not opening up its app economy and likely send shockwaves right to the nerve center of the Oval Office?
Trump already drew a line in the sand in October, when, following a phone call with Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, he said he would oppose any EU action against the company (see here).
More explicitly, Trump’s vice-president JD Vance has reportedly linked the US’s support for NATO with the EU upholding “free speech” and dropping charges against X.
— Trans-Atlantic Tension —
With Trump's new administration approaching, regulators around the globe are wrestling with the same questions (see here), as are the tech companies themselves. But EU enforcement rattling Washington is nothing new.
Over the years, US administrations have repeatedly struck out at Brussels lawmaking and investigations over tax treatment. Even Democrat President Barack Obama didn’t mince his words when decrying EU interventions.
Yet with Trump, things are different. The risk of a backlash is unpredictable and incalculable. Trump has already threatened tariffs against European exports. Counter-measures could just as easily come against French agricultural exports or German carmakers as they could against other tech companies.
Usually, the European Commission resorts to a simple mantra: legal enforcement is dispassionate, neutral and non-politicized. But that would mean sanctioning Musk and Cook's businesses just as Trump takes office, dealing a blow to the nascent relationship between new administrations on both sides of the Atlantic.
— Balancing act —
Recent experience shows it is possible to calibrate intervention to avoid blowback.
Last month, the commission fined Meta for abusing its dominance on its Facebook social network. The penalty of 798 million euros (around $850 million) was pitched high enough to hurt, but not so high as to catch the eye of Trump and Musk.
Still, this fine was nowhere close to those levied variously on Apple and Google in recent years, ranging from 1.8 billion euros to 4.34 billion euros.
Some of those fines have drawn Trump’s attention and ire before. In 2018, the 4.34 billion-euro sanction against Google’s Android mobile operating system prompted the then-president to declare that the EU has “truly ... taken advantage of the US, but not for long!” (see here).
At a time of heightened geopolitical risk, Ribera, Virkkunen and, above all, their boss Ursula von der Leyen will be all too aware of the dangers of harming relations with Washington before they even get going.
While X and Apple appear to have Trump’s ear, the consequences of fining companies such as Google and Meta are less clear.
Trump’s dislike of Facebook's parent, Meta Platforms, is well known, not least after it closed his account in 2021. Earlier this year, Trump called Facebook “a true Enemy of the People!” (see here).
Google has drawn criticism from Trump, as well as from members of his Republican party. Vance has said the company should be broken up (see here). But Trump hesitated to promote the breakup of Google when on the campaign trail (see here).
That question is currently at the center of one US case and one EU case. US enforcers have petitioned a judge, who found Google’s search business breached antitrust law, to force the company to sell its Chrome web browser (see here).
Over in Europe, antitrust enforcers formally accused Google in 2023 of harming competition in online advertising, and have said they may well break up its lucrative advertising business (see here). MLex understands that the investigation is largely concluded and that officials are awaiting political direction.
Similarly, investigators probing whether Apple failed to meet its obligations under a new EU digital law are also ready to wrap up their inquiry, subject to instructions from the top.
Fines in both cases could conceivably run into the billions of euros — and the consequences could reach far beyond the world of competition and tech regulation.
New commissioners taking office usually want to make their mark with uncompromising sanctions. But the risks now are higher than ever.
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