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In recent years, Brussels has conducted a bitter economic war against America's most successful companies: Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. Brussels uses an array of fines, investigations and even forcing the companies to hand over key technologies in return for exemption from other regulations. Brussels even has imposed a number of very far-reaching rules that are nothing more than a large scale expropriation of their IP. Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon have already had to pay out to the European Union many billions of dollars, not because they failed in any way to come up with better products and services than their competitors, but because Brussels' draconian rules and regulations are so difficult for them to comply with.
President Trump saw it and said enough.
When on July 24th the US President Donald Trump announced the opening of a Section 301 investigation concerning the campaign of fines and regulation of large tech companies by Europe, he started by criticizing the European Commission's latest move against Google. In two separate decisions Google has been fined for almost $1 billion for alleged breaches of the Digital Markets Act. The US President called those fines "another example of Europe robbing American companies and, in turn, the American taxpayer".
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer laid out the reasons why a Section 301 investigation into the EU's fines on Google and other big tech companies is fully warranted. "The European Commission's practices with respect to Google amount to de facto forced technology transfer and intellectual property theft, supported by unfair and unreasonable financial penalties," Greer said in a statement. He noted that Google's EU fines alone would total more than two percent of the EU's annual budget.
More than seven weeks have now passed since Trump gave his Trade people their instructions concerning the EU's 'robbing' of American technology companies.
There is no NOI. There is no Federal Register filing. There is no start date announced for the investigation. Silence.
In the time that Trump was announcing America would 'immediately' open a Section 301 investigation into Europe's campaign of fines and technology seizures on American tech giants, the European Commission refused to withdraw its campaign of severe fines on Google, nor ease up on the enforcement of its Digital Markets Act. No concessions have been made by Brussels to Washington. And, for now, the Commission is enjoying what it sees.
The EU's "Tech Sovereignty Package" is proceeding as planned with a €10 billion or so spending spree that is designed to reduce Europe's reliance on technology developed by foreigners, i.e. the Americans. This massive spending plan is funded in part by the vast sums of money that the EU extracts from the revenues of American companies who do business in Europe. All this while the EU demands that these same companies handed over on gold plate the intellectual property that underlies their technology in order to be allowed to compete fairly against European companies that are funded by this very same money.
Section 301 is a powerful trade tool for the U.S. President that has been used to start and manage the tariff campaigns that are currently reorganizing the global supply chain to better serve American workers. With this same authority, the President can start a Section 301 investigation into unfair digital trade practices by the EU, and subsequent to that finding, impose tariffs and/or other sanctions on a list of EU goods that would harm the EU more than they help the US. The President has already stated he is going to do this.
So the real question is who in Washington is slowing down the implementation of the President's order?
The rest of the world is watching too. The Chinese are watching to see if they can get away with similar treatment of their own tech companies. The Canadians are watching to see how this will play out. All of the world's major trading partners are watching to see how long it takes for the U.S. to actually follow through on the President's threats and take action to protect American workers and companies.
That the president said immediately means that seven weeks is not immediately. All levels of deep-state bureaucracy are dedicated to protecting transatlantic relations at the expense of the American worker. Someone needs to answer for the continued extraction of dollars from the American technology company by Brussels, and soon.
Although these American tech companies are not blameless due to their surveillance and repressive behavior, it's the point of what the EU is doing in broad daylight.
