The Trump administration is engaged in a full-scale assault on the independence and sovereignty of European countries that dare to try to regulate big tech in a way he doesn’t like. Apparently this is what we are exporting these days.
European countries are trying to regulate and impose fines on technology companies that aren’t following their laws. This should be a noncontroversial thing, a no-brainer, really. Sure, it’s no fun for big tech overlords to have to follow different rules in different countries, but that’s kind of how being an international presence works?
But not these days—not if President Donald Trump has his way.
The latest leverage the administration is deploying in order to stop other countries from enforcing their own laws is to threaten to launch investigations into “unfair digital trade practices.” The United Kingdom, the European Union, and South Korea are all in the administration’s crosshairs here.
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The administration isn’t threatening a full-fledged trade war quite yet, but just give it time. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is dangling lower tariff rates on steel and aluminum in front of the EU if they will only agree to regulate big tech companies the same way the United States does—which is to say, basically, not at all.
All of this is being done at the behest of big tech, of course. Here’s some anonymous spokesperson talking to Politico about it:
“I would just say that’s the next level of escalation. I think that’s what people are waiting for and looking for. What folks are looking for is like action over the tweets, which, we love the tweets. Everyone loves the tweets.”
Many people do not actually love the tweets, because X is basically a Nazi cesspool these days, chock-full of targeted harassment. But Trump still loves Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk, apparently, so the American government is stepping in to make sure Musk gets what he wants.
Earlier this month, the EU fined X $140 million for not following the EU’s Digital Services Act. Despite this getting spun as some sort of censorship, with Vice President JD Vance going on X to whine that the EU was “attacking American companies over garbage,” it’s really just a relatively boring result of a years-long investigation by the EU into X’s persistent violations of its rules.
The $140 million penalty relates to three violations of the DSA, none of which are about restricting X’s precious free speech for fascists.
First, X ran afoul of the DSA because it still says that blue checks represent verified users, but that hasn’t been the case for quite some time. Since Musk made blue checks freely available to anyone who will pay him $8 a month, scams and bots have run amok. Continuing to say these are verified users deceives consumers and violates the DSA.
Next, X has refused to comply with EU rules on ad transparency. The EU requires companies to keep a publicly available archive of all ads a platform runs and who pays for them. Apparently X just can’t handle that and instead has an archive that doesn’t show who paid for ads, doesn’t show what the ads are about, and doesn’t even show which broad categories ads fell under.
Finally, X got dinged because it won’t give researchers adequate access to public data. Since Musk took the helm, X has made it much harder for researchers to scrape information from the site, a thing that the American government doesn’t care about, but the EU does. But the notion that other countries get to have their own laws seems utterly foreign to this administration and the big tech folks it is coddling.
In a nice little show of “regulations for thee, but not for me,” the administration began threatening action against European companies like Spotify and Siemens unless the EU stops trying to enforce its own rules. It is no coincidence whatsoever that this little bit of mob boss mentality came one week after the EU penalized X.
Pretending that requiring a company to follow basic transparency rules is the height of censorship is especially ridiculous given that Federal Communications Commission Director Brendan Carr, back when he was a Project 2025 guy, called for platforms to be required to explain and justify all editorial decisions. That is quite a bit more heavy-handed than the EU requirement that X keep some ad records.
Related | You just can’t keep a good Nazi down in Trump’s America
The Trump administration is also making clear that any efforts to rein in disinformation on tech platforms are not only unwelcome, but basically a criminal act that warrants not letting you in the country.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio says that people who research and regulate disinformation are “radical activists” who undermine free speech, and on Wednesday officially barred five Europeans from entering the U.S. Also not welcome here? Anyone who has been a fact checker or content moderator, because that is also censorship.
The administration desperately wants to export the Trump/Musk view of free speech, which is that they get to spew the most hateful and bigoted lies imaginable, and you have to keep your mouth shut and listen, even if that means facing an unending torrent of abuse.
But this isn’t just about fake free speech. It’s also about keeping big tech CEOs happy. They’ve bowed and scraped and showered money on Trump to ensure that he continues to let them do whatever they want.
Those millions of dollars in “donations” directed toward the president’s dumb ballroom and boring inauguration are all about continuing to show Trump fealty. They don’t want much in return, really—just an unfettered, regulation-free atmosphere not only here, but worldwide. What an unholy alliance.
