Donald Trump, during his speech at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, criticized the European Union for its ongoing investigations against Apple, Google and other tech giants. The US President said that the fines imposed by the EU are a "form of taxation" for American companies. This was reported by The Hill.
"They won $15 or $16 billion from Apple. They won billions from Google. I think they’re after Facebook for billions and billions. These are American companies. Whether you like them or not, they’re American companies, and they shouldn’t be doing that. That’s, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a form of taxation. So, we have some very big complaints with the EU," Donald Trump said.
In his speech, the future US president mentioned a $14 billion fine that Apple received in September 2024 due to tax arrears in Ireland. At the same time, Google was fined $2.7 billion due to a seven-year antitrust case in which the company lost.
Meta has been the least affected by European regulators so far. In November, the company was fined $840 million for violating antitrust laws.
Recently, Donald Trump has been surrounded by representatives of most major US tech companies, whose CEOs stood in the front rows during his inauguration. Google and Microsoft, in particular, donated $1 million each to the inauguration, and Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta is ready to cooperate with the new administration.