Donald Trump says the US will launch an investigation into the European Union and threatened a fresh tariff over fines handed to some of the biggest American tech companies.
In a post to Truth Social, which Trump owns, the US president said the EU would pay a “very big price” over how it had treated Google, along with other major US tech companies Apple, Meta, and Amazon, which have also been investigated.
“The United States of America is not a “PIGGYBANK” for Europe, nor will we allow it to be!” he wrote.
Trump said any fines should be “entirely reversed” and that he was initiating a trade investigation of the EU while considering “a substantial TARIFF”.
He added that the US would “immediately initiate a 301 investigation” over European regulators’ alleged practice of “robbing American companies and, in turn, the American taxpayer”.
The call came not long after Apple lost a long-running dispute over unpaid taxes.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has been fined several times by EU regulators, including for violations of user privacy and competition laws. It is also facing new fines over purportedly “addictive” features of its apps.
Meta last year said the EU was “attempting to handicap successful American businesses”.
Amazon, however, appears to have been investigated at times by the European Commission, but avoided major fines. The company in 2022 reached an agreement with regulators to change some of its practices in Europe.
A separate regulatory body in Luxembourg did impose on Amazon a fine of more than $800mn for violations of General Data Protection Regulation rules, but that was overturned last year.