- Trump has hit EU fines against American companies
- The new president has said 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 President-elect Trump to stop US companies from paying EU fines, Trump has lashed out at the bloc, branding the fines “a form of taxation.”
Since 2022 alone, Meta has faced $2.67 billion in General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) fines for a number of reasons, including failure to ensure information security, lack of 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 ensure it remains secure when it is processed outside the EU.
“Major 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. It’s a form of taxation in my opinion. 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 previously faced hefty fines for breaching EU rules, with the European Commission today closing an initial investigation into X with a fine in the million-dollar region likely to be levied on the social media platform.
In 2023, Meta was hit with a $1.3 billion fine for transferring EU user data to the US. Google was fined $1.6 billion 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 investigations under the EU’s Digital Markets Act, with breaches resulting in a fine of up to 10% of global annual turnover. It is worth noting that the US has no comprehensive federal data protection regulation, with only 20 US states currently enforcing state-level data protection regulation.
