Trump slams EU fines on US firms, Apple, Meta, Google and others as a ‘form of taxation’

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President Trump criticized the European Union (EU) on Wednesday for levying hefty fines against the world’s biggest tech firms, calling it a “form of taxation” against American companies.

“They won $15 or $16 billion from Apple. They won billions from Google. I think they’re after Facebook for billions and billions,” Trump said during a virtual appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“These are American companies,” he continued. “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.”

The EU’s top court ruled in September that Apple owed 13 billion euros, or more than $14 billion, in back taxes to Ireland. The same day, the court also upheld a 2.4 billion euro, or $2.7 billion, fine against Google by EU antitrust regulators.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, was also fined nearly 800 million euros, or about $840 million, in November for alleged antitrust violations.

The leaders of these tech giants have drawn close to Trump in the months since he won the election, visiting the president at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., donating to his inaugural fund, and making changes to their platform’s policies that have been viewed favorably by the president.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg were among the tech leaders who joined Trump at his inauguration on Monday, receiving some of the best seats in the Capitol Rotunda. 

The tech titans, which also included Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, were seated close to Trump’s family and in front of the president’s own Cabinet picks, while several Republican governors were relegated to an overflow room in the Capitol.

The EU has been aggressively tackling the power of American tech companies for years. Most recently, the fee hit Apple’s bottom line in Q4, pulling lower its earnings per share from $1.64 to $0.97.

Google (GOOG, GOOGL) lost a legal battle with the EU in September, forcing the company to pay $2.7 billion for using its price comparison tool to disadvantage European services. Google also continues to fight a 2011 antitrust case over its Android operating system, which the EU says the company uses to impose “illegal restrictions on Android device manufacturers and mobile network operators to cement its dominant position in general internet search.”

Yahoo

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