Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said late on Friday that the U.S. government under incoming President Donald Trump should intervene to prevent the European Union from fining U.S. technology companies for violating antitrust rules and other violations.
"I think it's a strategic advantage for the United States that we have many of the most powerful companies in the world, and I think defending that should be part of America's strategy going forward," Zuckerberg said during an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
He added: "That's one of the reasons why I'm optimistic about President Trump. The president-elect of the United States went on the same show on the eve of the US presidential election in November and cited Rogan's support as a factor in his support from voters. I think he just wants America to win."
Zuckerberg complained that the EU has forced U.S. technology companies operating in Europe to pay "more than $30 billion" in undue fines over the past two decades. In November last year, the tech giant's Meta conglomerate, which operates Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other social media and communications platforms, was fined 797 million euros for violating EU antitrust rules by imposing unfair trading conditions on advertising service providers.
Zuckerberg believes the European Commission's application of competition rules is "almost like imposing tariffs on U.S. technology companies" and said U.S. President Joe Biden's outgoing administration failed to deal with the situation.
"If other countries were destroying another industry that we care about, the U.S. government might find ways to pressure them, but I think what's happening here is actually the exact opposite. The U.S. government is leading the attack on these companies, and that leaves the EU, essentially in all these other places, free to attack all U.S. companies and do whatever it wants," he said.
Zuckerberg's appearance on Rogen's podcast comes just days after he announced that Meta would be ending its third-party fact-checking program in favor of a so-called community notes model. The move was widely interpreted as Zuckerberg's attempt to curry favor with the incoming Trump administration, which has long denounced the moderation policy as censorship with a left-wing bias.
While acknowledging the changing "legal and policy environment," Meta also said Friday it would end its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
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