Trump Threatens Tariffs on EU over Tech

U.S. president Donald Trump has threatened to impose more tariffs on the European Union, after Google faced a €2.95 billion penalty, announced on Friday, September 5th. Responding in a post on his Truth Social network, Trump declared “my Administration will NOT allow these discriminatory actions to stand.”

The online posting marks a return to Trump’s repeated criticisms of European laws for ‘discriminating’ against U.S. tech companies. It’s a message reinforced by Vice President JD Vance, who has decried the state of free speech under EU law, not least online freedom of expression. Now that the European Commission has announced its plan to impose the antitrust penalty on Google, Washington’s twin concerns are coming together.

The Commission alleges that the tech colossus has abused its hegemony over the advertising technology market. Google now has 60 days to propose an alternative suggestion. In backing Google, Trump has hinted at launching an investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. This provision allows a president to impose trade restrictions if an investigation finds that a country is unjustifiably restricting U.S. commerce.

Faced with an EU investigation dating back to 2021, Google executives appear to have flagged the problem at a White House dinner for the technology industry last week. Having recently avoided seeing his company broken up by a judge in a U.S. antitrust hearing, CEO Sundar Pichai told Trump

I’m glad it’s over … Appreciate that your administration had a constructive dialogue, and we were able to get it to some resolution.

Now Trump, who views Brussels’s financial penalties imposed on Google as “effectively taking money that would otherwise go to American investment and jobs,” has come out on the side of U.S. tech firms. For now at least, this initiative—which mixes preventing ‘discrimination’ against enterprises such as Google with First Amendment concerns about free speech—is separate from the broader issue of agreeing a U.S.-EU tariff regime.

While the threatened U.S. tariff in support of Google would likely still need an executive order to become operational, Trump’s own Justice Department is preparing to take on Google in court over its alleged online advertising monopoly (on top of the earlier litigation). In the meantime, the EU’s focus on regulating tech giants will act as a barrier to further investments from trillion-dollar technology firms.