Now that he has found a new trade artifact, Donald Trump is once again shooting left and right. The President of the United States threatened the European Union this Friday with imposing new tariffs over the fine Brussels imposed on Google this week for violating competition laws.
“The European Union will pay a very high price for this illegal and deeply unethical conduct, about which I have repeatedly warned them. The sanctions will be fully revoked and, we foresee, a substantial TARIFF will be imposed on them as soon as possible,” Trump threatened via his social network, Truth.
The White House has found a new legal loophole to revive the tariff threat. This is Article 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which empowers the president to impose tariffs on countries that engage in “unfair, unjustifiable, or discriminatory” practices. Trump has resorted to this legal avenue to impose his latest round of tariffs on more than 60 economies worldwide, which he accuses of violating forced labor regulations, an announcement he made on Thursday afternoon.
The community competition body has merely applied the laws against market abuses by tech giants, which have almost unlimited resources to dominate their industries. The EU has fined tech giants for violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the Digital Services Act (DSA), and for their tax strategies. It has not only imposed fines on American tech giants but has also sanctioned other Chinese companies, such as Bydance (owner of TikTok), and has designated the Dutch hotel booking giant Booking as a market gatekeeper, with the additional obligations that entails.
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“The European Union is back at it again and, as usual, is directly targeting BIG American companies! After having fined Apple, for no reason, $15 billion, Meta $3 billion, Amazon $2.5 billion, and many others, we have just received news that Google, a truly advanced and extraordinary group, has been fined another $1 billion, without any explanation,” the Republican leader stated.
Brussels’ latest fine on Google amounts to 890 million euros. The sanction, in reality, stems from two sanctioning proceedings: one for 460 million for “privileging its own services” in the Google Search engine, and another for 430 million for “imposing restrictions on competitors […] with cheaper purchasing channels” in Google Play, the company’s app and game store.
“This brings the total fines on Google to over $18 billion! This illegal and highly discriminatory practice began at these levels during the first year of the sleepy Joe Biden administration, but it will not continue during the Trump administration. The United States of America is not a piggy bank for Europe, nor will we allow it to be! Let this TRUTH serve to make it clear that we will immediately initiate an investigation under Section 301 into this practice of STEALING from American companies and, by extension, the American taxpayer,” the occupant of the White House wrote via the social network he created when the tech giants he now defends expelled him from their platforms for inciting the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
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