President Donald Trump has threatened the European Union with steep tariffs and a new trade investigation, declaring that the bloc will pay a very big price after Brussels fined Google billion for breaching the Digital Markets Act.
Trump called the penalties against Google and other US technology firms highly unethical, writing on social media that the United States is not a piggybank for Europe. He said the practice started at high levels during the Biden administration but will not continue under his presidency.
The European Commission imposed the record fine on Thursday, ruling that Google had violated the bloc’s Digital Markets Act by favouring its own services in search results and restricting app developers from directing users to alternative platforms. The penalty adds renewed strain to US-EU relations at a time when trade tensions between Washington and Brussels had appeared to ease following last autumn’s Turnberry agreement.
EU regulators said Google gave preferential placement to its own shopping, travel and other services over rival offerings, and blocked app developers from steering customers towards deals outside its Play Store. The commission split the penalty roughly in half between the two breaches, giving Google 60 days to change its practices or face periodic fines of up to 5 percent of its average daily turnover.
Teresa Ribera, the commission’s executive vice president overseeing competition policy, called the action decisive yet balanced, arguing that products should succeed on merit rather than ownership. Kent Walker, a Google executive, described the ruling as product degradation driven by a small number of complainants.
Trump has now threatened to launch a probe under Section 301 of US trade law, a tool historically used to investigate unfair foreign trade practices. Although such an investigation could take months to produce formal results, Trump suggested that tariffs could follow far sooner, directly targeting European exports to the United States.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer warned this week that Brussels’s approach towards American technology firms risked unravelling the fragile trade understanding reached between the two sides. EU officials have pushed back, insisting they answer to their own laws rather than outside pressure from Washington.
The standoff marks a return to the trade confrontation that defined much of Trump’s first term, when Washington imposed tariffs on European steel and aluminium, triggering retaliation from Brussels on American bourbon, motorcycles and farm products. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has previously signaled that the EU would respond firmly to any new trade barriers.
Diplomats in Brussels expressed concern that the escalating dispute could derail broader cooperation on issues ranging from China trade policy to defence coordination. The European Union is Europe’s largest single market and a crucial trading partner for the United States, with bilateral trade in goods and services exceeding trillion annually.
Author: Pulse Of Nations Wire Desk
