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Donald Trump has said the United States will “immediately initiate a 301 investigation” into the European Union and is considering “a substantial TARIFF” in response to fines levied on American technology companies, days after the European Commission fined Google €890m (about $1bn).
The president set out the threat in a post on Truth Social, the platform he owns. He said the EU would pay a “very big price” over its treatment of Google, along with Apple, Meta and Amazon, which have also been investigated by European regulators.
“The United States of America is not a “PIGGYBANK” for Europe, nor will we allow it to be!” Trump wrote. He said any fines should be “entirely reversed”.
Trump said the investigation would examine European regulators’ alleged practice of “robbing American companies and, in turn, the American taxpayer”.
Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 gives the Office of the United States Trade Representative the power to investigate and respond to foreign trade practices it believes are unfair. According to the Congressional Research Service, the statute allows USTR to impose tariffs or other import restrictions, withdraw trade agreement concessions, or reach a binding agreement with the foreign government concerned. The second Trump administration has launched several such investigations since last year.
The tariff threat comes one day after Trump announced new tariffs of between 10 per cent and 12.5 per cent on 60 trading partners, including the EU, the UK and China. Those measures followed Section 301 findings on forced labour in supply chains, which put UK exporters in scope of a fresh duty.
Last month Trump threatened a 100 per cent import tariff on any European country that introduces a digital services tax on American technology companies, despite a number of countries having operated such taxes for years. The UK’s own digital services tax, which applies to groups with worldwide digital revenues above £500m and UK-derived revenues above £25m, raised almost £360m from US technology groups in its first year.
The Google penalty that prompted the post was issued by the European Commission for breaches of the Digital Markets Act. The Commission said Google had operated in a way that squeezed out competitors to its own services. Its statement on the decision sets out the findings in full.
José Castañeda, a spokesman for Google, told the BBC the company had “worked hard to comply” with the Digital Markets Act but had “expressed our concerns about the impact of recent EC decisions”.
“We appreciate the engagement by the administration and US government,” Castañeda added.
In his post, Trump also claimed Apple had received EU fines of $15bn, Meta $3bn and Amazon $2.5bn. It is not clear where those figures come from.
Amazon has been investigated at times by the European Commission but has avoided major fines, reaching an agreement with regulators in 2022 to change some of its practices in Europe. A separate regulatory body in Luxembourg imposed a fine of more than $800m on Amazon for breaches of General Data Protection Regulation rules, but that penalty was overturned last year.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has been fined several times by EU regulators, including over user privacy and competition breaches, and faces further fines over what regulators describe as “addictive” features in its apps. Meta said last year that the EU was “attempting to handicap successful American businesses”.
Shortly before he was elected in 2024, Trump said Apple chief executive Tim Cook had called him directly to complain about fines the company had received from European regulators. The call came shortly after Apple lost a long-running dispute over unpaid taxes.
Google, Meta, Apple and Amazon have donated millions of dollars to funds behind Trump’s campaign and presidency.
Representatives of Meta, Apple and Amazon, as well as the European Commission, have been contacted for comment.
LinkedIn post
Donald Trump says the US will open a Section 301 trade investigation into the European Union and is considering a substantial tariff, following the European Commission’s €890m fine on Google for breaches of the Digital Markets Act.
Trump said fines against Google, Apple, Meta and Amazon should be “entirely reversed”, claiming European regulators were “robbing American companies”. The threat comes one day after he announced tariffs of 10 to 12.5 per cent on 60 trading partners, including the EU and the UK, and a month after he threatened a 100 per cent tariff on countries operating a digital services tax.
Google said it had “worked hard to comply” with the DMA.
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