The White House said on Wednesday that fines on Apple and Meta Platforms by the European Union were a “novel form of economic extortion” that the United States will not tolerate, Reuters reported.
Apple was fined 500 million euros ($570 million) on Wednesday and Meta 200 million euros, as EU antitrust regulators handed out the first sanctions under landmark legislation aimed at curbing the power of Big Tech.
The fines were seen as a development that could stoke tensions between EU and U.S. President Donald Trump who has threatened to levy tariffs against countries that penalize American companies.
The White House on Wednesday called the legislation, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), discriminatory. The fines followed a year-long investigation by the European Commission, the EU executive, into whether the companies comply with the DMA tat seeks to allow smaller rivals into markets dominated by the biggest companies.
Politico reported: An apparent setback for the U.S. tech sector — nearly $800 million in European Union fines against Apple and Meta — could be just what the industry needs to get its global anti-regulation campaign back onto President Trump’s radar.
Tech lobbyists have long wanted Washington to push back forcefully on the European Commission’s 2022 Digital Markets Act, a package of antitrust rules that lobbyists claim unfairly targets American tech companies.
On Wednesday the first penalties came down under the act €500 million against Apple and €200 million against Meta, along with significant requirements for both companies to change their business practices.
Now that the EU’s tech competition rules have finally hit U.S. companies directly, “we’re starting to see the rubber hit the road,” said Katie Harbath, a longtime former public policy director at Meta.
Just hours after the penalties were announced, lobbyists for Meta and top tech groups attacked the fines — notably referring to them as “tariffs,” a legally debatable point seemingly designed to get Trump’s attention.
The Wall Street Journal reported: The European Union fined Apple and Meta Platforms hundreds of millions of dollars and ordered the companies to comply with the bloc’s tech rules in a move that risks ratcheting up tensions with the Trump administration as officials pursue trade talks.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, on Wednesday slapped Apple with a 500 million euro fine, equivalent to about $570 million, for allegedly breaching the bloc’s Digital Markets Act. It fined Meta €200 million.
The commission also issued a cease-and-desist orders that could have a bigger impact than the fines. One order targets Apple’s App Store and the other takes aim at Meta’s use of personalized ads — important revenue streams for each company.