EU pushes ahead with Big Tech antitrust enforcement
wsj.com
wsj.com
Not anti-trust but Cook called Trump to complain about the Irish tax outcome where Apple has to pay something like $14b
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4d75zl212o
What happens if tech companies, long seemingly supporting Democrats are wooed by Trump with promises of bullying Europe with more tariffs to stop them from going after American companies.
This would result in tech companies supporting Republicans due to the finanical benefit while controlling the messaging on their platforms
For example "Instagram and Threads will start recommending political content to users in the US." After a few years of either limiting it or providing an option(? Unsure)
how is this not trade war by EU. They are making apple pay taxes from 3 decades ago?
> "Ireland granted Apple unlawful aid which Ireland is required to recover". The European Commission found that corporate tax rates as low as 0.005% paid by the tech giant represented an unlawful subsidy. Specifically because other companies were not permitted to obtain the same tax arrangements. As a consequence Apple must pay €13 billion, excluding interest, to the Irish Treasury.
You only get caught at the end of the illegal activity, but you're responsible for all of it.
My EU country has the concept of "done continuously" to any criminal code article, including tax evasion and all other provisions, and I'm pretty sure it's an EU-wide concept, where penalties go up by a percentage if the crimes were done continuously over a period of time. So breaking the law continuously also matters, not only at the time of getting caught.
What I don't agree with is Apple getting fined. Apple needs to pay the proper taxes for the entire period of getting state aid, but Ireland should get the penalty for subsidising a private company, am infringement procedure should determine that.
It's funny that you say it was well known to everyone and also wasn't an issue. It was well known because precisely because it was an issue.
If a company and country are dishonest about the tax deals they illegally make it's pretty dishonest to call it dishonest to demand the taxes are back payed.
This ruling applies to all the illegal tax schemes European countries have been using. So there are definitely other companies getting the bill as well.
Because it is pretty simple, you don't really care about a struggling company or one that just gets by, even if their marginal tax rate is lower than it is supposed to be, since there isn't much to be taxed the difference is minimal in any case. However, if the company is extremely successful and makes big money the difference is absurd and it actually becomes unfair for everyone (both other companies who have to play by the rules, and citizens who get taxed more than a filthy rich corp).
And this is the real reason it "became" a problem and took a while to resolve. Had Apple stayed a relatively small company with small sales numbers in the EU (and thus small profits) the deal would have probably not have much scrutiny and even if it had, it probably wouldn't have gotten any focus. It would have cost more money in legislators time than it would have brought in anyway, even though the deal was fundamentally unfair. But life is generally unfair, so it doesn't matter that much.
Quite the opposite. It would be an insult to law abiding companies if they didn't demand back taxes in exchange for market access.
According to the EU's highest court they did and that's all that matters. I think you're trying to say that that if you or the US believes that the EU is wrong regardless of EU decisions the US is justified in attacking.
My original comment is pointing out that the current admin seems willing to bully other countries using international trade.
So the EU goes after US tech companies, US tech companies flock to Trump, Trump attacks the EU
Its like saying Euros shouldn't be upset by american tariffs because they are legal per american laws and thats all that matters.
I still don't get why Euros are so freaking upset that USA decided it wants to operate differently. Why doesn't usa have that right.
edit: for butthurt euros calling me names below, Apple's claim is that The EU did not have specific rules in place prohibiting Ireland’s tax policies when Apple benefited from them. It even won its appeal on EU court in 2020 on that basis.
Its time for countries like India to claw back taxes that european companies didn't pay during colonization.
> USA can makeup whatever laws it wants and apply them retroactively too
Which shows how little understanding you have of this topic. This isn't a new law, at all. The tax has always been owed, because state aid / state subsidy has always been illegal in the EU. No new law is being applied retroactively here.
A debt needs to be paid.
Why doesn't the EU have the right to their tax rules and what their courts decide?
You're framing this as if the US is doing something that has nothing to do with the EU.
Euros need to accept their lower status in the world due to their economic decline. They are still hanging on to some racist colonial thinking they are still the top dog.
They are same as phillipines or bangladesh when it comes to relationship with USA. They don't get some special ally status bases on their racist ideas.
They will have to pay similar back taxes to former colonies soon now that they don't have big brother protecting them.
I think you are ignorant about law in general and European institutions. European Court of Justice is established in 1952. European Economic Community is established in 1957. Ireland joined the European communities in 1972.
The court order is just, as Apple didn't pay fair amount of taxes from whole EU operations. This makes it an EU matter. They just need to pay their taxes.
The FT article is much more clear about why exactly it is harmful:
But if you think it's still relevant, tariffs against Canada violate international law, perhaps you should get in touch with the US government to have them lifted. Lead by example, and all that.
ok i will reach out to Indian govt about usa's canada tariffs
2. It's not a new tax that was applied retroactively it was an EC ruling about how Apple took advantage of the situation. Which was later affirmed by the highest EU court.
This has already happened. There is just friction between executives and company culture.
For example with South Africa
" “The United States won’t stand for it, we will act,” Trump added. “Also, I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!”
https://www.jurist.org/features/2025/02/11/explainer-underst...
Even if tech companies wanted this and previous admins tried diplomatic pressure or discussions I don't believe it was to the level that we are seeing now.
Yes! And in fact, funny your example is South Africa because in the past there was action against South Africa when it was run by the apartheid government! Including but not limited to Congress passing the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, which called for an end to apartheid and placed economic sanctions on South Africa. The bill prohibited the import of South African goods, the sale of arms and military equipment to the nation, and any new investment.
I believe Europe wasn’t as activist against the South African apartheid government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-apartheid_movement_in_the...
However, there is some context which I feel is missing from your post, in particular how it’s a bit strange that Trump even cared to politically attack South Africa.
We’re pretty small fry from an economic output point of view, not nothing, but a pretty small market which although it has great potential, has been somewhat stagnant largely due to incompetence and corruption by our government.
Something that would have however gotten notice in the US is that we formally filed a case in ICC against Israel for human rights violations (for the record, I would not personally speak in support of Israel or Palestine).
Something else that is also likely a factor (and is mentioned in the article) is that Musk was born here. Not mentioned in the article is that he has unequivocally stated he has no love for South Africa. If I recall correctly, his family left the country while he was still in school, where he was bullied.
It would be pretty natural that he has some emotional connection to here and would pay some attention to what’s happening, at the very least to things which would reinforce his existing world view on us.
Another interesting thing that happened in the last couple of years is that Starlink looked into operating here, but decided not to when the government said a precondition was that a significant percentage be black owned (in practice many companies who adhere to this essentially view it as a form of tax where they’re obligated to give a portion of their company away).
Our BBBEE laws which dictate that you can’t do business with the government unless your own company and all your suppliers (and their suppliers, ad infinitum) have enough black ownership is quite contentious (and a form racial of discrimination in my books) has resulted in many international investors simply walking away, Starlink amongst them, and I don’t blame them.
But It’s exactly the kind of thing Musk would no doubt have heard about with Starlink and if I were Musk it would have peeved me quite a bit, possibly enough to point us out to Trump who’s always looking for a punching bag to reinforce his existing world views on injustices.
Wait, you think that barely 30 years of laws that require a minimum percentage of Black ownership after FORTY THREE years of white apartheid is racial discrimination?
Cry me a river.
Meanwhile, the poor get nothing for it and are still having terrible service from the government in regard to things like education and healthcare.
And entrepreneurs in smallish businesses who happen to be white (like they can control their race) get left with the choice of either not growing their business (which very likely employs a fair percentage of black people) or giving some of it away.
It’s really a bit of an Animal Farm (you should read the book if haven’t) situation here, the black government may not commit human rights atrocities like the apartheid one before, but their level of delivery to the poor is almost as bad while they’re very good at enriching themselves personally.
Meanwhile the middle class (white and black alike) pay huge amounts of income tax, but still have to pay for private education, healthcare and armed response services because the public services are so badly run. So considering how little I get from my tax money, I consider them to largely be a charity to those less fortunate than me, which I’m okay with in principle, but when I see the government being useless or enacting policies which stifle economic growth, it understandably frustrates me.
EU policies will be decided by the europeans, and if the US tries to coerce EU e.g. with tariffs, EU will use it’s “economic bazooka” the Anti-Coercion Instrument which will target some of the same US tech companies.
https://www.ft.com/content/7303e57e-67ca-477a-8d00-8d5213f71...
In the US, we kind of worked ourselves into a box.
More hostile action from Trump will only deepen European resolve.
I don't understand what we were thinking? There's like 600 million people in Europe. All of whom were perfectly content to sleep in the then current global order.
Why take a stick and poke a sleeping lion like that? For the life of me I'll never figure that out?
https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...
> The document simply doesn’t hang together. Part 3 makes the case for tariffs by arguing that they won’t be inflationary because they’ll lead to a stronger dollar, reducing import prices. Part 4 then calls for an all-out effort to weaken the dollar, using emergency powers if necessary.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trumps-team-of-economic-y...
There is unfortunately no other explanation i can think of at this point. Stupidity of this level isn't enough. You need a strong incentive to suicide us all ( because neither europe nor the US are going to win anything with this kind of war. Only our competitors will)
In way over his head. Clueless how to behave, or what 'winning' or 'losing' might look like.
I think it’s simple: He (and his cadre) personally can profit from crisis , so he makes them, as often as possible.
People often forget that these companies care about nothing but money. This isn't an anti-capitalist rant or anything; that's just how the world works. As publicly traded corporations, they are obligated to their shareholders to always make decisions that are best for the company, no matter what. That would include supporting Republicans, if necessary.
It doesn't matter how many angry engineers vent on Twitter about how their favorite megacorps are now Trump supporters. These decisions come from the very top.
if US "gatekeepers" wish to operate in the European market, it will be under license, with a joint venture that is majority controlled by European shareholders, with technology transfer agreements
essentially: using their own greed against them
and if they don't like it, they can operate somewhere else
Apple has a company called GCBD running their iCloud so the Chinese gov can access it https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-ce...
Google, LinkedIn, Uber, etc left China. Meta refused to do a joint venture so never entered the market. The only big American names who did a joint venture were Apple and Tesl
The Tiktok law gives the US gov power to ban social media companies controlled by a "U.S. foreign adversary" (only 6 countries) and offers the chance for divestment, but doesn't require moving operations to the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Americans_from_Fore...
Given America's hostile stance to its former allies, joint ownership and technology transfer agreements as a condition for its firms operating in the EU market sounds more than reasonable. If US firms aren't happy with this, they can always lobby to impose similar restrictions on foreign big tech firms operating in the US...
If there were any.
The problem with flipping the table and starting a trade war is everyone loses... And the correct response to someone starting lose-lose games is tit-for-tat. Maybe big tech firms will think twice before throwing their support for an anti-trade candidate. (They absolutely could have used their position in media to stop this insanity, if they wanted to, but now we all have to lie in the bed they've made.)
And if they are collecting data against EU regulations how do they stop them? They already aren’t complying with the joint venture in this hypothetical. They dont pay the fine. Then you have to ban them.
Thats the dynamic in China. You have a domestic company that owns the operations and is fully regulated bu the host country. And you have to ban anyone that doesn’t cooperate with that model.
Tiktok is the exception that proves the rule .
as long as ads money gravy train to USA is stopped, USA companies will leave themselves / or comply
They'll very quickly figure out how to become compliant.
And if they dont, you have to block the service.
Say Google doesnt play ball with the EU and the EU disallows them from operating in the EU. EU user visits a search page and sees an ad. This ad comes from some company outside the EU. The EU user can access Google and Google gets paid. How do you stop the EU user from accessing Google.
You still don't need to specifically block either the EU user or Google's payment for that ad view.
To continue with the example, if the EU secures judgement that Google is not stopping services & refuses to abide licensing requirements, other assets Google has within the EU's jurisdiction can be at risk.
If a tech company operates in a jurisdiction against their laws, ultimately they would have to make sure they have nothing that can be taken from them there.
But Google is already not operating within the EU in this scenario. Google says "no thanks we dont want to play by your rules" yet google.com still exists and EU users can access it. That's why you have to block it, along with anyone else that doesn't go along with the proposed forced tech transfer to a domestic company. Or you dont block it and you arent enforcing the proposed rule.
They could take the hit, but that's not "we don't like a rule, so we're walking away" money.
its not relevant, what really is important is Googel/FB siphoning money away from EU companies that pay for ads.
This is the source of high valuation of ad driven US businesses: ability to siphon money from businesses around the world simply for showing an ad. Check "Google Tax" if you are familiar with this term
Stop that pipeline and big tech will comply
The revenue stream is European companies paying US companies for ads (or rather European firms paying Irish/Dutch subsidiaries of Gogel/Insta/FB for ads).
Yes, you could use TikTok on the web; but... have you ever tried using TikTok's web interface? It's an absolute joke. And on the other end, shipping a webapp subjects you to all sorts of consumer-friendly technical interference like ad blockers and de-cluttering that is intended to make the social network serve the user and not itself.
[0] On Android, TikTok did ship an APK to evade being kicked off Google Play; but that's only slightly more effective than telling people to go run AltStore on a Mac or PC to dev-sign a TikTok IPA that will be missing half the features because Apple doesn't allow certain permissions to be provisioned on free dev accounts.
I think in the US, we've put ourselves in a really bad spot. Most will likely blame Trump/Vance, and they definitely deserve their share. But the American tech industry has been contributing its quota towards this break for a long time as well. And we should be honest about that.
Also, I know that no one will want to hear this on HN, but workers at American companies have also not made us any friends in Europe. There is a strong undercurrent of resentment due to some American workers not having the ability to maintain a humble and collaborative demeanor online or IRL.
I think that televised meeting with Zelensky was a wake-up call to many people, including myself
we can't allow ourselves to become any more dependent on the country that elected this regime, and not once (because a mistake can be forgiven), but twice
the current dependency also needs to be reduced to ensure the long survival of our societies and way of life
whilst their AI crawlers plunder any and all copyrighted material ever placed on the internet
Again, if we want to call web crawling IP theft. Which seems dubious.
These are the kinds of hypocrisies that I'm talking about when I say that American companies from Amazon to Tesla are also responsible for the worsening fracture between the US and EU. Trump and Vance should not escape responsibility for their share of this fiasco. But this transatlantic break is something that was very much a team effort. And as a team we in the US have been, perhaps unwittingly, working towards this hostility for a long time.
If the EU takes actions specifically designed to hurt the US, do you think the US wouldn't respond in kind? This is ironically similar to Trump imposing tariffs on Canada and acting surprised when they imposed tariffs in response.
The relatively free trade between the US and the EU has been mutually beneficial. The number #1 selling car in the EU is made by an American company [1]. And the US is a huge market for luxury European cars [2].
Everyone is better off by being able to choose between a European or an American car rather than being forced to buy domestic.
[1] https://www.best-selling-cars.com/europe/2023-full-year-euro...
[2] https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/usa/article/detail/T0438942EN...
This is a large scale extraction of wealth from the EU, and it has been going on for 20+ years. They can cry all they want about it, it's very clear we (the EU) have much more to gain than to loose by kicking them out and growing our own solutions.
Not to mention the fascist turn the US are taking with this presidency, we don't want these people owning our digital lives.
The US has started the trade war against EU already, with tariffs on steeel/aluminum - assuming they are still active, Trump seemingly lacks cojones to keep tariffs up once others retaliate.
Not to say the active hostility against EU, by threatening to annex Greenland (which is currently a Danish territory), open support for Putin in his aggression against Ukraine (which threatens Europe) and so on.
At this point the US should be seen as a hostile foreign nation by EU. EU is doing well by tightening the screws against US tech giants. Those companies are possibly a threat to essential infrastructure, and should be treated as such too.
On March 12th the US imposed a tariff on steel/aluminum, the EU responded with an tariff of total equivalent value on US steel/aluminum/agricultural products [1].
This is the core of my point, the US created a tariff against the EU, the EU responded in kind.
> the active hostility against EU, by threatening to annex Greenland...[Trump's] aggression against Ukraine
Trump has said concerning things about both Ukraine and Greenland and I don't want to downplay that. That being said, the US is currently sending both weapons and intelligence to Ukraine [2].
In fact, he US has given Ukraine more aid than the EU and all of its member states combined (though less than all of Europe combined) [3].
Being the largest supplier of aid, sending weapons and sharing intelligence with Ukraine is clearly not siding with Russia.
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_...
[2] https://www.npr.org/2025/03/12/nx-s1-5324926/u-s-resumes-ukr...
America choosing to spend less money on Ukraine, pushing for resolution to a conflict that has resulted in mass deaths for Ukrainian males, and renegotiating tariffs doesn’t deserve the kind of hysterical overreaction I’m seeing from Europeans. In the end, if it escalates to open warfare on each other’s economies rather than a reset of trade agreements, it’ll damage both the EU and US to China’s benefit.
China is actually less hostile to EU than US at this point.
The US has a history of fucking over other countries for their own benefit instead.
I am not saying that EU should align with China or any such thing. There is no reason to not rely in them for trading however.