The Trump administration significantly escalated its tough rhetoric against the European Union on Tuesday, severely criticizing the EU for using the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA) to implement "discriminatory" regulations on U.S. technology companies. The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) issued a stern statement via social media, clearly warning Brussels: If the EU continues to use these regulations to restrict the competitiveness of American companies, the United States will have "no choice" but to use "all available tools" to fight back.
The report pointed out that the Trump administration believes that the EU is systematically targeting US technology giants such as Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta. In a statement, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative accused the EU and its member states of imposing restrictions, deterrence and discriminatory treatment on U.S. service providers through unreasonable legal means. The statement emphasized that if this situation continues, the United States will take corresponding retaliatory measures.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative specifically mentioned in the statement that the EU's "Digital Markets Act" has serious biases in its enforcement logic. The United States pointed out that the judgment standard of the bill is not based on whether consumers have been actually harmed, or even whether the company has actually violated regulations, but mainly depends on whether the company is large-scale, successful, and the most critical point-whether it is a U.S. company. The United States believes that once a company meets the above characteristics, the originally general market rules will suddenly change. This kind of supervision method for specific companies is completely different from the traditional antitrust law that applies to all companies, resulting in foreign competitors who are not included in the regulatory list gaining an unfair competitive advantage.
It is worth noting that in order to demonstrate the seriousness of the threat of retaliation, the USTR statement even directly listed a list of European service providers that may become targets of U.S. countermeasures, including well-known European companies such as Accenture, DHL, Mistral, SAP, Siemens and Spotify.
The background of this diplomatic friction is that the EU has recently issued huge fines to a number of US technology companies based on the DMA and DSA. Earlier this year, Apple was fined 500 million euros and Meta was fined 200 million euros. In addition, Elon Musk’s social platform
U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the EU's fines on U.S. companies as "very unfair" and characterized them as a disguised "tax." As early as September this year, Trump threatened that the United States would raise tariffs if the EU did not curb its regulatory offensive against the U.S. technology industry. This also put the trade framework just established by the two sides in July 2025 at risk of rupture.
At the same time, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee also held a hearing on this issue to discuss the threat to U.S. innovation and competition posed by "discriminatory foreign regulations" that imitate the Digital Markets Act. The Trump administration emphasized that it will resolutely defend the interests of the U.S. technology industry and oppose any form of overseas "regulatory extortion."