From the second when the founding father of Amazon Jeff Bezos, the Meta Boss Mark Zuckerberg, the chief of Apple Tim Cook and the top of Google Sundar Pichai have been seen to take essential seats on the inauguration of President Donald Trump in January was clear that the connection between the nice American applied sciences with the White House could be narrower within the second time period of Trump.
Many of those managers had known as Trump throughout his first time period on points comparable to local weather change and immigration.
This time they have been clearly at house, led by Spacex and Tesla Boss Elon Musk, who spent virtually $ 300 million to assist the president’s marketing campaign and since then has assumed a key position as an effectivity tsar within the new regime.
However, the revelation of Trump’s “Liberation Day” of the charges and the next political tour of the Russian mountains – which at the moment enjoys a 90 -day break for negotiations – launched nice applied sciences within the coronary heart of a industrial battle in beer.
The EU is able to put stress on the United States by threatening charges of its providers, the place it has a industrial surplus with the EU, if final week he declared the negotiations within the present industrial battle final week, mentioned the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.
“For them (massive technological corporations), Europe is a really engaging and wealthy market”, Von der Leyen additionally Media Die Zeit this week, including: “It has 450 million individuals who, in comparison with the remainder of the world, have a excessive degree of residing and free time. This signifies that, right here in Europe, right here there’s a big turnover and large income in digital providers. No soldier has no lack of entry to this market.”
Hitting technological corporations might be one of many choices that the Commission is exploring, whereas the President of the United States Donald Trump has introduced a 90 -day break within the industrial conflict.
Let’s check out the variables that have an effect on the choice to incorporate measures that may have an effect on technological teams comparable to Meta, Google and Facebook.
1. Big tech choices
The Landmark Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA): the EU’s legal guidelines that face the unlawful on-line content material and the distortion of the digital market, have been put underneath hearth by the giants of know-how because the republican administration of the President of the United States Donald Trump entered workplace, claiming that the foundations are unjust.
Peter Navarro, Senior Trump Advisor, has overtly accused the blockade of conducting “Lawfare” in opposition to nice US know-how. In Answer, the EU said that “will not make any concession on its digital and technological rules” as part of any commercial negotiations with the United States.
The European Commission has launched several investigations pursuant to DSA since the rules entered into force a few years ago, but none of the investigations was wrapped, despite the fixing for some cases a non -binding deadline for March 25 of this year.
An investigation for non -compliance with the DMA should soon be closed as regards Apple and Meta, waiting for a political decision to be taken at the highest level of the Commission.
“We are currently working on the adoption of the short -term final decisions,” said the spokesman for the Thomas Regnier Commission on Tuesday, while indicating that technical work has been finished “for some files”.
The Commission stressed that these DMA probes are conducted strictly based on the regulation that does not discriminate companies on the basis of the country of origin. But the fact that most of those under its American sphere means that decisions are now seen through the objective of the commercial beer war, regardless.
On the contrary, the DSA probes are not yet advanced: with only one survey on X – to allow dark models and not be able to curb the spread of illegal content – making significant progress. A significant factor that could complicate the case of X is the CEO of the Elon Musk platform, which is also councilor of the Trump government.
Musk could be held personally responsible for a possible multimilionary fine for a violation of the DSA, depending on the X’s business model, said the commission at the end of last year. This means that the Commission would also explain the revenues of companies such as Space Exploration Technologies and Neuralink. DSA fines can total up to 6% of the company’s global revenues of the company.
It is worth noting that the US authorities could actually see their eyes with the European Competition Commission. The Federal Trade Commission – the US antitrust executor – accuses a destination of abusing its dominant position through the purchase of WhatsApp and Instagram. A trial was opened before the US judges on April 14th.
Elon Musk’s Starlink could also be captured in the commercial war. Numerous EU countries are wary of their dependence on satellite infrastructures owned by the musk and are trying to reduce strategic dependence. Whether it’s a form of retaliation in the tariff fight or for other reasons it means that Starlink has been sucked into the orbit of the commercial war.
Currently, Musk’s Starlink satellites played a vital role in maintaining Internet connectivity in Ukraine following the invasion of Russia. Some EU member states, such as Poland, have contributed to financing the Starlink terminals to support Ukrainian resilience on the ground.
However, despite its importance in the conflict areas and the response to emergencies, Starlink remains largely absent from European families. The system is generally more expensive and slower than traditional broadband operators on the continent, making it an appropriate option for most consumers.
Brendan Carr, commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission of the United States, recently declared to the Financial Times that Europe risks being captured between competing technological superpowers. “If Europe has its own satellite constellation, then big, I think that better. But more generally, I think Europe is captured a bit between the United States and China. And it is a kind of time for the choice,” he said.
The EU is trying a third way trying to develop its alternatives. The Iris2 project is on site and Eutelsat is also ready to block Starlink, however those projects may take some time.
Member States including France and Germany have indicated that they are thinking of including digital services in the EU response to the US rates.
The French Economy Minister Eric Lombard suggested hitting the use of data by Big Tech through regulation in an interview with the French media. The data are considered “black gold” for artificial intelligence and the size of the European market make it tempting for us great technologies. Von der Leyen also reported that the EU was ready to introduce a tax on digital advertising revenues. A digital tax was under discussion to the OECD, until Trump torpedoed any possibility of agreement last January.
The EU could also hit Big Tech by distributing the “nuclear option”: its anti-coercion tool. This would allow the EU to withdraw the licenses and intellectual property rights from foreign companies.
However, taxing US technological services would raise questions similar to the burst of the original Trump rates: it could inflict more self -harm to Europe than on the expected objectives and raise embarrassing questions about the technological sovereignty of the blockade and on resilience.
Covid-19 pandemics and the aggression of Russia in Ukraine led the commission to push for a “technological sovereignty” agenda In an try and turn out to be much less depending on the areas overseas.
ANNOUNCEMENTBut years later there may be little to point out for this. Most cloud providers stay within the arms of some US gamers, for instance. And with regards to chips – broadly used for the automotive business, area, protection and amongst different sectors – the EU has solely about 10% of the world microchip market and is basically depending on different areas of the world, Figures supplied by the Commission signifies.
A bigger group of EU member states, the so-called D9+-Belgio nations, Cecchia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Slovenia and Spain called To improve EU digital competitiveness and technological sovereignty in a gathering final month.
Tuesday the Dutch minister for financial affairs, Dirk Beljaarts answer For parliamentary questions on the truth that the nation needs to scale back its dependence on US know-how, he’s attempting to “strengthen the digital autonomy of the federal government” specializing in the event of a sovereign authorities cloud, in addition to limiting “undesirable addictions” on some technological corporations.
But as for the remainder of Europe, the focusing on of digital sovereignty stays an aspiration and within the meantime goal for nice know-how might imply reducing the bottom from underneath the toes.
ANNOUNCEMENT 
ANNOUNCEMENT
