The Trump administration is increasingly on a collision course with the European Union over fines against big technology companies.
google, apple and Meta The European Union is contesting fines imposed by the EU since early 2024 for violations of internal antitrust and competition laws totaling more than 6 billion euros ($7 billion).
These have become increasingly at issue as both companies and the White House argue that the fines reflect the EU’s hostility to innovation, while the EU told CNBC that its tough stance is to force companies to make decisions that benefit consumers.
Six fines have been issued since 2024.
March 2024: Apple is fined €1.84 billion under antitrust laws for abusing its dominant position in the music streaming app distribution market. November 2024: Meta is fined €797 million under antitrust laws for benefiting Facebook Marketplace. September 2025: Google is fined €2.9 billion under antitrust laws for anticompetitive conduct in its advertising technology business. April 2025: Apple fined €500 million for failing to comply with “anti-steering” obligations. Meta was fined €200 million under the Digital Markets Act for asking users to agree to share their data with the company or pay for an ad-free service. December 2025: X is fined €120 million under the Digital Services Act for breaching transparency obligations.
“All companies operating in the EU have a responsibility to European citizens and should respect the rules designed to protect them,” a European Commission spokesperson told CNBC, adding that fines would only be imposed if a company’s operations in Europe breached EU rules.
Donald Trump’s administration takes a different view.
The European Union has stepped up criticism of the bloc, accusing it of over-regulating its tech companies and jeopardizing Europe’s ability to benefit from the rise of AI.
US government intervention
President Trump signed a memorandum in February saying he would consider tariffs to “combat digital services taxes (DST), penalties, practices, and policies that foreign governments impose on U.S. businesses.”
According to Reuters, Jacob Helberg, the undersecretary of state for economic growth, told reporters last week that fines against U.S. companies are the biggest source of friction in economic relations between the EU and the United States.
This is not a new point of tension. Helberg also said the EU has imposed more than $25 billion in fines on U.S. tech companies over the past 20 years.
“If the European Union is going to participate in the AI economy… it’s going to need access to data centers, data, and the U.S. AI hardware stack. We can’t overregulate and move the regulatory goalposts and impose huge fines on companies,” U.S. Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder told Ian King on CNBC’s “Early Edition of Europe” on March 27.
When asked for comment on how EU Big Tech fines are impacting U.S.-European relations, a U.S. Commerce Department spokesperson referred CNBC to a November interview with Secretary Howard Lutnick. “Let’s resolve the backlog of litigation,” he told Bloomberg. “Let’s put them behind us.”
Europe also counterattacks
There are differences of opinion on the other side of the Atlantic.
“Fines imposed under EU competition law, digital markets law and digital services law act firstly as penalties for breaches of EU law and secondly as a deterrent to ensure that these EU laws are complied with, both to deter repeat offenses by the company concerned and to deter violations by other market operators,” a European Commission spokesperson told CNBC.
Europe is treading the line between relying on American tech companies for much of its digital infrastructure (even as governments try to diversify their tech suppliers and develop sovereign alternatives) and forcing those companies to abide by the rules.
The spokesperson added that fines are a “last resort” if attempts at an amicable outcome fail.
Many of the changes were accomplished without fines, they said. After the EU initiated formal proceedings under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in March 2025, Apple allowed its competitors’ connected devices, such as smartwatches, to work more seamlessly with the iPhone without resorting to fines, the European Commission spokesperson added.
Apple told CNBC that DMA would stifle innovation, weaken privacy protections, delay product launches or reduce quality, and increase security risks. It did not comment on the EU’s claims that it had changed its processes in response to the DMA procedure.
fine
Companies may change their behavior “only after receiving a fine,” a European Commission spokesperson told CNBC.
Meta has changed its “pay or accept” offer for Facebook and Instagram users in 2025, following a DMA violation decision that resulted in a €200 million fine. The European Commission said in a statement in December that the company will start offering the new service to users in early 2026.
Reached for comment, Mehta referred CNBC to Joel Kaplan, chief international affairs officer.
Kaplan said at the time that the EU’s fine was an attempt to “handicap successful U.S. companies,” adding: “It’s effectively imposing billions of dollars in tariffs on Meta while requiring us to provide an inferior service.”
The EU has not recovered the full amount from the companies in question as the €6 billion fine is being challenged in court, but the law requires the fine to be covered by interim payments and financial guarantees.
Several investigations by the European Commission into US Big Tech companies are also ongoing.
The commission told Meta in February that it intended to impose “interim measures” to prevent it from removing third-party AI assistants from WhatsApp as part of an ongoing investigation into the company.
The EU also launched a formal process in March to investigate whether social media platform Snapchat, owned by Snap Inc., complies with digital services laws regarding the safety of children online.
