American Tech Is Under Siege in Europe

European Union (EU) bureaucrats will stop at nothing to punish large and successful companies that improve consumers’ lives. To make matters worse, the EU’s regulatory overdrive is disproportionately targeting U.S. companies and American consumers.

The House Judiciary Committee recently announced it “subpoenaed Europe’s secret 183-page censorship order to [the social media platform] X.” The findings are deeply disturbing. According to the Committee, “The [EU’s] first ever fine under the Digital Services Act (DSA) was against X and Elon Musk for €120 million — nearly 6 percent of its GLOBAL revenue — for defending free speech. Now we know why: … Euro bureaucrats fined X because it innovated its blue checkmark system and refused to give into demands from misinformation pseudoscientists.” Unfortunately, this is the very tip of the iceberg. President Trump and Congress must continue pushing back against this foreign red tape.

Punishing X for improving its services is troubling, but not surprising. Following the implementation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Apple was mandated to allow third-party app marketplaces to exist on its products in the EU. Despite real security concerns posed by this onerous requirement, Apple has done its best to comply by allowing other stores and subjecting them to fees to mitigate these risks and ensure a safe experience for consumers.

But pricing changes have not been allowed — because of the very regulators who have been implementing DMA requirements. The company notes, “The European Commission [EC] has refused to let us implement the very changes that they requested. In October, we submitted a formal compliance plan and they have yet to respond. The EC is using political delay tactics to mislead the public, move the goal posts, and unfairly target an American company with burdensome investigations and onerous fines.” And now, European bureaucrats are reportedly trying to blame Apple for third-party app stores’ business failures.

Because of the EC’s mandate that “[g]atekeepers, like Apple, must allow interoperability of third-party devices with their operating systems,” Apple has also been forced to rethink the engineering of features such as iPhone mirroring to Mac and live translation with AirPods, and delay rollout. The newest and best technologies are remarkable feats of engineering, and requirements like interoperability can prove extraordinarily costly to implement. As Jennifer Huddleston (senior fellow in technology policy at the Cato Institute) pointed out on X, “The real time translation feature would be immensely helpful in Europe with so many languages; however, the consequence of European regulation is that it might not be available. Once again DMA means less benefits from innovative technology for the consumer.”

Regulators in Brussels claim that expansive tech regulations will ensure transparency, protect consumers, and level the competitive playing field. In the EC’s own words, the DMA “establishes a set of clearly defined objective criteria to qualify a large online platform as a ‘gatekeeper’ and ensures that they behave in a fair way online and leave room for contestability.” Consumers are noticing firsthand that these lofty expectations are falling far short.

For example, Redditors have been pointing out that Google Maps has been “a severe pain in the butt” lately because of DMA-related changes. As Politico’s Edith Hancock recently reported, “users could [previously] search for a location on Google by simply clicking on the Google Map link to expand it and navigate it easily. That feature doesn’t work in the same way in Europe anymore and users are irritated.” DMA has also been a drag on Europe’s tourism industry. Because the regulation prohibits Google Search from showing travel-related results that link directly to airline and hotel sites, users must make do with intermediary websites that cost extra time and money to navigate through.

And when companies don’t act precisely how EU bureaucrats demand, they are hit with bruising fines. Apple and Meta were punished for bringing their innovations to European markets, being hit with €500M and €200M fines under the DMA (respectively). These fines were levied despite these businesses introducing data transparency, message interoperability, and new advertising-related choices into their products. But that does not matter when Brussels regulators are determined to punish foreign competitors anyway.

President Trump has laudably pushed back against this regulatory overreach, and Congress has entered the fray as well. The U.S. government must continue to fight for U.S. consumers and companies and keep away the Brussels bureaucrats.

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Ross Marchand is the executive director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.