US president Donald Trump has threatened to slap tariffs on any country that imposes digital taxes or regulatory limits on US tech companies.
In a post on his Truth Social platform late on Monday (25 August), Trump railed against “Digital Taxes, Legislation, Rules, or Regulations,” and warned he could impose more tariffs and tighten controls on US technology exports.
“As the President of the United States, I will stand up to Countries that attack our incredible American Tech Companies. Digital Taxes, Digital Services Legislation, and Digital Markets Regulations are all designed to harm, or discriminate against, American Technology,” Trump wrote.
He didn’t specifically mention European digital rules, but the EU has several regulations that affect US platforms, including the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA), which have inflamed US officials in the past.
The DMA is designed to stop big online platforms such as Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, and TikTok from abusing their market power, while the DSA sets strict rules for how platforms handle harmful content and disinformation for users above 45 million.
In a diplomatic cable sent on 4 August, US secretary of state Marco Rubio ordered US diplomats to launch a lobbying campaign against the DSA.
In May, he threatened visa bans for people who "censor" speech by Americans, including on social media.
And on Monday, newswire Reuters reported that the US was considering visa restrictions on individual EU officials responsible for implementing the DSA, but this could not be independently verified by EUobserver.
Last week, Brussels and Washington published a joint statement on their upcoming trade deal in which the EU Commission expressly said that it had made "very clear to the US that changes to our digital regulations were not on the table."
But the EU has made significant concessions to US demands to close the deal. In several opinion pieces published over the weekend, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen defended the agreement, saying it “prevented a trade war” that “would have been celebrated only in Moscow and Beijing.”
Trump’s renewed attack on digital rules, even without mentioning the EU specifically, could bring more US pressure on EU officials to water down EU digital legislation to secure the trade deal.
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Wester is a journalist from the Netherlands with a focus on the green economy. He joined EUobserver in September 2021. Previously he was editor-in-chief of Vice, Motherboard, a science-based website, and climate economy journalist for The Correspondent.
Wester is a journalist from the Netherlands with a focus on the green economy. He joined EUobserver in September 2021. Previously he was editor-in-chief of Vice, Motherboard, a science-based website, and climate economy journalist for The Correspondent.