It is fascinating how sentiment on here has changed in the last few months. If you look back on any of the many threads on this in the last year you see a much more staunch defence of the tech companies. The world sure has changed
I support it in general because regardless of the origin of the business, if it has significant power to control the market, this power has to be removed. However, what I am concerned with more, and this is not being discussed at all in the mainstream, is forcing the companies to offer adequate support. If one of these megaplatforms have a bug that prevents a person from using them, there is no sane way to contact a live human for support and there is no requirement for them to address that bug in a timely manner. So, on one hand, their aim is to get the whole world onto their platform in their specific market segment, but on the other hand, they are not kept liable when people get deplatformed.
There are US companies benefiting of big tech antitrust enforcement. For example, Apple opening up their ecosystem could be good news for Garmin and Bose. Since there are more tech companies in US it means that fighting antitrust could still be a win for US.
Of note, so far, you can still take advantage of all the features that the EU has forced Apple to add, as a developer (though not as a user), even if your company is outside the EU. This could of course change in the future, but US companies (other than the largest in the entire world, such as Apple and Google) do very much stand to benefit from what the EU is doing.
What happens if tech companies, long seemingly supporting Democrats are wooed by Trump with promises of bullying Europe with more tariffs to stop them from going after American companies.
This would result in tech companies supporting Republicans due to the finanical benefit while controlling the messaging on their platforms
For example "Instagram and Threads will start recommending political content to users in the US." After a few years of either limiting it or providing an option(? Unsure)
"The original decision covered the period from 1991 to 2014. The European Commission is trying to retroactively change the rules and ignore that, as required by international tax law, our income was already subject to taxes in the US."
how is this not trade war by EU. They are making apple pay taxes from 3 decades ago?
They broke the law, Apple and Ireland. Just because Ireland is a country it doesn't mean it can't be subject to laws.
> "Ireland granted Apple unlawful aid which Ireland is required to recover". The European Commission found that corporate tax rates as low as 0.005% paid by the tech giant represented an unlawful subsidy. Specifically because other companies were not permitted to obtain the same tax arrangements. As a consequence Apple must pay €13 billion, excluding interest, to the Irish Treasury.
Did they really break the law? I’m not a fan of Apple and their aggressive walled gardens and general hostility. But I feel like the tax optimization with Ireland is well known to everyone and wasn’t an issue until now. It seems dishonest to go back and demand retroactive taxes afterwards. And I bet they aren’t the only company in this situation so are they being singled out unfairly?
State aid to private companies is outright illegal in the EU. It's a matter of finding out how far back this continuous state aid goes to figure out the total.
You only get caught at the end of the illegal activity, but you're responsible for all of it.
My EU country has the concept of "done continuously" to any criminal code article, including tax evasion and all other provisions, and I'm pretty sure it's an EU-wide concept, where penalties go up by a percentage if the crimes were done continuously over a period of time. So breaking the law continuously also matters, not only at the time of getting caught.
What I don't agree with is Apple getting fined. Apple needs to pay the proper taxes for the entire period of getting state aid, but Ireland should get the penalty for subsidising a private company, am infringement procedure should determine that.
They broke the law indeed. It was a legally untested tax structure that was found to be illegal all along. This also is not the first time the European courts have told member states to stop preferential treatment in tax deals.
It's funny that you say it was well known to everyone and also wasn't an issue. It was well known because precisely because it was an issue.
If a company and country are dishonest about the tax deals they illegally make it's pretty dishonest to call it dishonest to demand the taxes are back payed.
This ruling applies to all the illegal tax schemes European countries have been using. So there are definitely other companies getting the bill as well.
It wasn't even well known until very late into the 2000s (even early 2010) when Apple actually started to make a lot of money and got a lot more scrutiny.
Because it is pretty simple, you don't really care about a struggling company or one that just gets by, even if their marginal tax rate is lower than it is supposed to be, since there isn't much to be taxed the difference is minimal in any case.
However, if the company is extremely successful and makes big money the difference is absurd and it actually becomes unfair for everyone (both other companies who have to play by the rules, and citizens who get taxed more than a filthy rich corp).
And this is the real reason it "became" a problem and took a while to resolve. Had Apple stayed a relatively small company with small sales numbers in the EU (and thus small profits) the deal would have probably not have much scrutiny and even if it had, it probably wouldn't have gotten any focus.
It would have cost more money in legislators time than it would have brought in anyway, even though the deal was fundamentally unfair. But life is generally unfair, so it doesn't matter that much.
According to the EU's highest court they did and that's all that matters. I think you're trying to say that that if you or the US believes that the EU is wrong regardless of EU decisions the US is justified in attacking.
My original comment is pointing out that the current admin seems willing to bully other countries using international trade.
So the EU goes after US tech companies, US tech companies flock to Trump, Trump attacks the EU
> According to the EU's highest court they did and that's all that matters
Its like saying Euros shouldn't be upset by american tariffs because they are legal per american laws and thats all that matters.
I still don't get why Euros are so freaking upset that USA decided it wants to operate differently. Why doesn't usa have that right.
edit: for butthurt euros calling me names below, Apple's claim is that The EU did not have specific rules in place prohibiting Ireland’s tax policies when Apple benefited from them. It even won its appeal on EU court in 2020 on that basis.
Its time for countries like India to claw back taxes that european companies didn't pay during colonization.
> USA can makeup whatever laws it wants and apply them retroactively too
Which shows how little understanding you have of this topic. This isn't a new law, at all. The tax has always been owed, because state aid / state subsidy has always been illegal in the EU. No new law is being applied retroactively here.
It's not a retroactive law. It's a law not being followed. If you decide to not file your taxes properly and need to pay all the tax you owe after getting found out the law did not change.
i am talking about all the hilarious whining thats goin on over tarrifs and what not after they just genocided whole continents. Trump might be the biggest bufoon of all time but he is giving euros a little taste of their own medicine and its amazing to watch.
Euros need to accept their lower status in the world due to their economic decline. They are still hanging on to some racist colonial thinking they are still the top dog.
They are same as phillipines or bangladesh when it comes to relationship with USA. They don't get some special ally status bases on their racist ideas.
They will have to pay similar back taxes to former colonies soon now that they don't have big brother protecting them.
I think you are ignorant about law in general and European institutions. European Court of Justice is established in 1952. European Economic Community is established in 1957. Ireland joined the European communities in 1972.
The court order is just, as Apple didn't pay fair amount of taxes from whole EU operations. This makes it an EU matter. They just need to pay their taxes.
Apple sold devices in the EU without paying the requisite local taxes by misrepresenting sales figures and lobbying for exemption through Irish law. They knew that their accounting was dishonest and continued with it anyways. Simply having to pay the taxes you owe isn't a trade war.
The FT article is much more clear about why exactly it is harmful:
Since ~January of this year, international law doesn't mean anything anymore.
But if you think it's still relevant, tariffs against Canada violate international law, perhaps you should get in touch with the US government to have them lifted. Lead by example, and all that.
2. It's not a new tax that was applied retroactively it was an EC ruling about how Apple took advantage of the situation. Which was later affirmed by the highest EU court.
> What happens if tech companies, long seemingly supporting Democrats are wooed by Trump with promises of bullying Europe with more tariffs to stop them from going after American companies.
This has already happened. There is just friction between executives and company culture.
Have previous administrations been as aggressive against other countries due to their policies?
For example with South Africa
"
“The United States won’t stand for it, we will act,” Trump added. “Also, I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!”
Even if tech companies wanted this and previous admins tried diplomatic pressure or discussions I don't believe it was to the level that we are seeing now.
> Have previous administrations been as aggressive against other countries due to their policies?
For example with South Africa
Yes! And in fact, funny your example is South Africa because in the past there was action against South Africa when it was run by the apartheid government! Including but not limited to Congress passing the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, which called for an end to apartheid and placed economic sanctions on South Africa. The bill prohibited the import of South African goods, the sale of arms and military equipment to the nation, and any new investment.
I believe Europe wasn’t as activist against the South African apartheid government.
Im sorry, I dont understand your point. I'm talking about Zuckerberg, Bezos, Cook, etc. all appealing to Trump to fight back against EU regulation and continuing to advance their interests globally. They are all very much in favor of Trump's view of EU regulation on US tech companies.
Speaking as a South African, that article was very interesting and didn’t seem to misrepresent anything that I’m aware of, but I’m also not especially knowledgeable in these areas. I don’t support this law myself, but as mentioned by the article it’s not as bad as Trump makes out.
However, there is some context which I feel is missing from your post, in particular how it’s a bit strange that Trump even cared to politically attack South Africa.
We’re pretty small fry from an economic output point of view, not nothing, but a pretty small market which although it has great potential, has been somewhat stagnant largely due to incompetence and corruption by our government.
Something that would have however gotten notice in the US is that we formally filed a case in ICC against Israel for human rights violations (for the record, I would not personally speak in support of Israel or Palestine).
Something else that is also likely a factor (and is mentioned in the article) is that Musk was born here. Not mentioned in the article is that he has unequivocally stated he has no love for South Africa. If I recall correctly, his family left the country while he was still in school, where he was bullied.
It would be pretty natural that he has some emotional connection to here and would pay some attention to what’s happening, at the very least to things which would reinforce his existing world view on us.
Another interesting thing that happened in the last couple of years is that Starlink looked into operating here, but decided not to when the government said a precondition was that a significant percentage be black owned (in practice many companies who adhere to this essentially view it as a form of tax where they’re obligated to give a portion of their company away).
Our BBBEE laws which dictate that you can’t do business with the government unless your own company and all your suppliers (and their suppliers, ad infinitum) have enough black ownership is quite contentious (and a form racial of discrimination in my books) has resulted in many international investors simply walking away, Starlink amongst them, and I don’t blame them.
But It’s exactly the kind of thing Musk would no doubt have heard about with Starlink and if I were Musk it would have peeved me quite a bit, possibly enough to point us out to Trump who’s always looking for a punching bag to reinforce his existing world views on injustices.
> Our BBBEE laws which dictate that you can’t do business with the government unless your own company and all your suppliers (and their suppliers, ad infinitum) have enough black ownership is quite contentious (and a form racial of discrimination in my books)
Wait, you think that barely 30 years of laws that require a minimum percentage of Black ownership after FORTY THREE years of white apartheid is racial discrimination?
While I didn't initially dislike the idea of BBBEE in principle, in practice it does a lot of making already rich black people even richer even though they’re doing no extra work at all, they’re often being given money for doing nothing except sitting in an annual meeting.
Meanwhile, the poor get nothing for it and are still having terrible service from the government in regard to things like education and healthcare.
And entrepreneurs in smallish businesses who happen to be white (like they can control their race) get left with the choice of either not growing their business (which very likely employs a fair percentage of black people) or giving some of it away.
It’s really a bit of an Animal Farm (you should read the book if haven’t) situation here, the black government may not commit human rights atrocities like the apartheid one before, but their level of delivery to the poor is almost as bad while they’re very good at enriching themselves personally.
Meanwhile the middle class (white and black alike) pay huge amounts of income tax, but still have to pay for private education, healthcare and armed response services because the public services are so badly run. So considering how little I get from my tax money, I consider them to largely be a charity to those less fortunate than me, which I’m okay with in principle, but when I see the government being useless or enacting policies which stifle economic growth, it understandably frustrates me.
They will only get a financial benefit if Trump is successful in convincing EU to change their policies, but I think it is pretty little chance of that happening.
EU policies will be decided by the europeans, and if the US tries to coerce EU e.g. with tariffs, EU will use it’s “economic bazooka” the Anti-Coercion Instrument which will target some of the same US tech companies.
In the US, we kind of worked ourselves into a box.
More hostile action from Trump will only deepen European resolve.
I don't understand what we were thinking? There's like 600 million people in Europe. All of whom were perfectly content to sleep in the then current global order.
Why take a stick and poke a sleeping lion like that? For the life of me I'll never figure that out?
I've only just started reading that, but right in the first few paragraphs it says that the main problem is that USD is overvalued, and their proposed solution isn't inflationary. I'm kind of confused.
That’s because it doesn’t make sense. From Paul Krugman:
> The document simply doesn’t hang together. Part 3 makes the case for tariffs by arguing that they won’t be inflationary because they’ll lead to a stronger dollar, reducing import prices. Part 4 then calls for an all-out effort to weaken the dollar, using emergency powers if necessary.
The only rational i've got to explain trump policy, is that he's been supported by non-western countries to destroy the western world one way or another.
There is unfortunately no other explanation i can think of at this point. Stupidity of this level isn't enough. You need a strong incentive to suicide us all ( because neither europe nor the US are going to win anything with this kind of war. Only our competitors will)
Remember he's done business on the order of billions. Now he's responsible in some way for a trillion-dollar economy. He's in way over his head, acting like he's one company in a marketplace and he can stiff customers, vendors and other businesses like there's a limitless market. Instead of only like 100 countries in the world.
In way over his head. Clueless how to behave, or what 'winning' or 'losing' might look like.
John Bolton has a possible explanation for many of Trump's actions: He doesn't like Trudeau, but he likes Putin (etc). You can't make that shit up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O99JIvjq9t0
I don’t think so. Trump has no vested interest in stability. He doesn’t serve the public as past presidents have done. That’s not what he’s trying to do.
I think it’s simple:
He (and his cadre) personally can profit from crisis , so he makes them, as often as possible.
> This would result in tech companies supporting Republicans
People often forget that these companies care about nothing but money. This isn't an anti-capitalist rant or anything; that's just how the world works. As publicly traded corporations, they are obligated to their shareholders to always make decisions that are best for the company, no matter what. That would include supporting Republicans, if necessary.
It doesn't matter how many angry engineers vent on Twitter about how their favorite megacorps are now Trump supporters. These decisions come from the very top.
“Best for the company” is not equivalent to “increase profit no matter what,” and in fact, multiple court cases have upheld the idea that corporations hold duties to other stakeholders like employees, the public, and more, which are equal if not even superseding to a duty to the shareholder.
At this point, weakening any American tech company really is a matter of data sovereignty for Europe. That may not be the main reason all this started, but I think recent months have underscored Europe's need, and supercharged Europe's determination in this regard. I'd expect significant changes in EU policies regarding tech companies going forward. Mostly calibrated to decrease American dominance in the sector.
In any other setting, I would agree. However, most of us here in the US are very unhappy with big tech. The lack of regulation is harming me as a consumer, but as a lobbying-based economy, America affords consumers little to no power. The EU might clearly favor their industries, and be overly aggressive in tech where they lack the momentum America has. The lack of any consumer-oriented support in the US makes me root for the other guy. Sometimes, E2E or USBC for the iphone is something I would argue most Americans are in favor for, but big tech refuses to implement to milk the sheep. Famously, lightning was only kept by Apple for so long because of the revenue it generates as a proprietary cable, despite the abundance of usbc cables. That type of monopolistic practices should be shamed, but we need the EU given America refuses to regulate big Tech.
personally, I think the way to deal with this is the way the Chinese have done it (very successfully)
if US "gatekeepers" wish to operate in the European market, it will be under license, with a joint venture that is majority controlled by European shareholders, with technology transfer agreements
essentially: using their own greed against them
and if they don't like it, they can operate somewhere else
The only countries that do this in the world are China and Iran. Russia and India do it partially, such as rules for storing data domestically so they can snoop on it.
Google, LinkedIn, Uber, etc left China. Meta refused to do a joint venture so never entered the market. The only big American names who did a joint venture were Apple and Tesl
There is no law in America requiring domestic joint ventures.
The Tiktok law gives the US gov power to ban social media companies controlled by a "U.S. foreign adversary" (only 6 countries) and offers the chance for divestment, but doesn't require moving operations to the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Americans_from_Fore...
You absolutely can, because the companies providing tech services need to get paid, either from local companies buying ad space, or directly from their users, and you can just block payment to non-compliant firms.
Given America's hostile stance to its former allies, joint ownership and technology transfer agreements as a condition for its firms operating in the EU market sounds more than reasonable. If US firms aren't happy with this, they can always lobby to impose similar restrictions on foreign big tech firms operating in the US...
If there were any.
The problem with flipping the table and starting a trade war is everyone loses... And the correct response to someone starting lose-lose games is tit-for-tat. Maybe big tech firms will think twice before throwing their support for an anti-trade candidate. (They absolutely could have used their position in media to stop this insanity, if they wanted to, but now we all have to lie in the bed they've made.)
And if they are collecting data against EU regulations how do they stop them? They already aren’t complying with the joint venture in this hypothetical. They dont pay the fine. Then you have to ban them.
Thats the dynamic in China. You have a domestic company that owns the operations and is fully regulated bu the host country. And you have to ban anyone that doesn’t cooperate with that model.
If the US removed every non US service that doesn’t transfer majority ownership of US operation to a US firm, like he is suggesting the EU does, then yes. That would constitute a Great Firewall.
The context of this is considering requiring companies to pay/acquire a licence to operate in the EU; if a company isn't willing to abide the terms of the license, not operating in the EU is the whole point.
As mentioned elsewhere, no you don't; you block the companies from being paid for providing the service. It's up to the companies to deal with it then.
In most cases the company isnt paid by the end EU user. They can still serve ads to EU users.
Say Google doesnt play ball with the EU and the EU disallows them from operating in the EU. EU user visits a search page and sees an ad. This ad comes from some company outside the EU. The EU user can access Google and Google gets paid. How do you stop the EU user from accessing Google.
> In most cases the company isnt paid by the end EU user. They can still serve ads to EU users.
You still don't need to specifically block either the EU user or Google's payment for that ad view.
To continue with the example, if the EU secures judgement that Google is not stopping services & refuses to abide licensing requirements, other assets Google has within the EU's jurisdiction can be at risk.
If a tech company operates in a jurisdiction against their laws, ultimately they would have to make sure they have nothing that can be taken from them there.
>To continue with the example, if the EU secures judgement that Google is not stopping services & refuses to abide licensing requirements, other assets Google has within the EU's jurisdiction can be at risk.
But Google is already not operating within the EU in this scenario. Google says "no thanks we dont want to play by your rules" yet google.com still exists and EU users can access it. That's why you have to block it, along with anyone else that doesn't go along with the proposed forced tech transfer to a domestic company. Or you dont block it and you arent enforcing the proposed rule.
its not relevant, what really is important is Googel/FB siphoning money away from EU companies that pay for ads.
This is the source of high valuation of ad driven US businesses: ability to siphon money from businesses around the world simply for showing an ad. Check "Google Tax" if you are familiar with this term
accessing service is a cost center, no need to block service.
The revenue stream is European companies paying US companies for ads (or rather European firms paying Irish/Dutch subsidiaries of Gogel/Insta/FB for ads).
How was the US planning to ban Tiktok without a great firewall? I presume they would demand that internet companies don't route their traffic. Stop them locally caching data etc.
America has a Great Firewall, it's called AppleMobileFileIntegrity.kext[0]. The TikTok ban relied heavily on the fact that a social network practically needs to have a mobile app and thus prohibited them from having it. It was less of a "ban TikTok" bill and more of a "government gets to kick apps off the App Store" bill.
Yes, you could use TikTok on the web; but... have you ever tried using TikTok's web interface? It's an absolute joke. And on the other end, shipping a webapp subjects you to all sorts of consumer-friendly technical interference like ad blockers and de-cluttering that is intended to make the social network serve the user and not itself.
[0] On Android, TikTok did ship an APK to evade being kicked off Google Play; but that's only slightly more effective than telling people to go run AltStore on a Mac or PC to dev-sign a TikTok IPA that will be missing half the features because Apple doesn't allow certain permissions to be provisioned on free dev accounts.
Specifically, weapons over which we won't have full control after we take delivery. There's another point in that agreement, design authority over those weapons must be in EU — e.g. no licenced components (even 100% manufactured in Europe) that USA needs to provide software updates for.
Yeah. I think regulations of that nature may be coming.
I think in the US, we've put ourselves in a really bad spot. Most will likely blame Trump/Vance, and they definitely deserve their share. But the American tech industry has been contributing its quota towards this break for a long time as well. And we should be honest about that.
Also, I know that no one will want to hear this on HN, but workers at American companies have also not made us any friends in Europe. There is a strong undercurrent of resentment due to some American workers not having the ability to maintain a humble and collaborative demeanor online or IRL.
> I think in the US, we've put ourselves in a really bad spot. Most will likely blame Trump/Vance, and they definitely deserve their share. But the American tech industry has been contributing its quota towards this break for a long time as well. And we should be honest about that.
I think that televised meeting with Zelensky was a wake-up call to many people, including myself
we can't allow ourselves to become any more dependent on the country that elected this regime, and not once (because a mistake can be forgiven), but twice
the current dependency also needs to be reduced to ensure the long survival of our societies and way of life
But other search engines already crawl Google's websites. If we want to call that IP theft. The alleged IP theft against Google would be new and of a different kind than what Google is committing.
Again, if we want to call web crawling IP theft. Which seems dubious.
These are the kinds of hypocrisies that I'm talking about when I say that American companies from Amazon to Tesla are also responsible for the worsening fracture between the US and EU. Trump and Vance should not escape responsibility for their share of this fiasco. But this transatlantic break is something that was very much a team effort. And as a team we in the US have been, perhaps unwittingly, working towards this hostility for a long time.
Maybe this will finally see European software engineers getting better compensation. The companies might avoid it if they move quickly as the US tech industry is a garbage fire at the moment (from an employee perspective) but that will eventually subside and they'll be competing against US companies again for top talent.
> Mostly calibrated to decrease American dominance in the sector.
If the EU takes actions specifically designed to hurt the US, do you think the US wouldn't respond in kind? This is ironically similar to Trump imposing tariffs on Canada and acting surprised when they imposed tariffs in response.
The relatively free trade between the US and the EU has been mutually beneficial. The number #1 selling car in the EU is made by an American company [1]. And the US is a huge market for luxury European cars [2].
Everyone is better off by being able to choose between a European or an American car rather than being forced to buy domestic.
The tech industry though is majoritarily dominated by US companies, that pays close to no taxes compared to the benefits they make on EU citizen.
This is a large scale extraction of wealth from the EU, and it has been going on for 20+ years.
They can cry all they want about it, it's very clear we (the EU) have much more to gain than to loose by kicking them out and growing our own solutions.
Not to mention the fascist turn the US are taking with this presidency, we don't want these people owning our digital lives.
> If the EU takes actions specifically designed to hurt the US, do you think the US wouldn't respond in kind?
The US has started the trade war against EU already, with tariffs on steeel/aluminum - assuming they are still active, Trump seemingly lacks cojones to keep tariffs up once others retaliate.
Not to say the active hostility against EU, by threatening to annex Greenland (which is currently a Danish territory), open support for Putin in his aggression against Ukraine (which threatens Europe) and so on.
At this point the US should be seen as a hostile foreign nation by EU. EU is doing well by tightening the screws against US tech giants. Those companies are possibly a threat to essential infrastructure, and should be treated as such too.
> The US has started the trade war against EU already
On March 12th the US imposed a tariff on steel/aluminum, the EU responded with an tariff of total equivalent value on US steel/aluminum/agricultural products [1].
This is the core of my point, the US created a tariff against the EU, the EU responded in kind.
> the active hostility against EU, by threatening to annex Greenland...[Trump's] aggression against Ukraine
Trump has said concerning things about both Ukraine and Greenland and I don't want to downplay that. That being said, the US is currently sending both weapons and intelligence to Ukraine [2].
In fact, he US has given Ukraine more aid than the EU and all of its member states combined (though less than all of Europe combined) [3].
Being the largest supplier of aid, sending weapons and sharing intelligence with Ukraine is clearly not siding with Russia.
I think big tech deserves anti trust regulation and action because it is good for a competitive market that actually puts customers first. They’re too big and powerful and abuse their power to hurt fair competition. But I think the type of aggressive action you’re talking about - and the motivation to do it solely to weaken America - will open up a lot of destructive actions back and forth.
America choosing to spend less money on Ukraine, pushing for resolution to a conflict that has resulted in mass deaths for Ukrainian males, and renegotiating tariffs doesn’t deserve the kind of hysterical overreaction I’m seeing from Europeans. In the end, if it escalates to open warfare on each other’s economies rather than a reset of trade agreements, it’ll damage both the EU and US to China’s benefit.
For the moment, and only because it wants to be the global hegemon, and I promise you that the CCP is not isolationist and will do far worse to Europe than even Trump, for all his destructive and inflammatory idiocy, will do.
Sonehow I doubt it. China was from time immemorial a nation of merchants. They excel in trade. Even their communist experiment, from a historical perspective, quickly gave in for them to revert to what they do best.
The US has a history of fucking over other countries for their own benefit instead.
I am not saying that EU should align with China or any such thing. There is no reason to not rely in them for trading however.
