Zuckerberg calls on Trump to stop the EU from fining US tech companies

The US government under new President Donald Trump should intervene to stop the EU from fining US tech companies for violating antitrust rules and committing other violations, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday, UNN reports citing Politico.

Details

"I think it's a strategic advantage for the United States that we have a lot of the strongest companies in the world, and I think that should be part of the U.S. strategy going forward to protect that," Zuckerberg said during an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

"And that's one of the things I'm optimistic about with President Trump," he added.

The US president-elect appeared on the same program ahead of the November presidential election in America and cited Rogan's endorsement as a factor in his support among voters. "I think he just wants America to win," Zuckerberg said of Trump.

Zuckerberg complained that the EU has forced US tech companies operating in Europe to pay "more than $30 billion" in fines for breaking the law over the past two decades. In November last year, the Meta conglomerate, which is owned by the tech CEO and operates Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other social media and communication platforms, was fined €797 million for violating EU antitrust rules by imposing unfair terms of trade on advertising service providers.

Zuckerberg argued that the European Commission's application of competition rules is "almost like a tariff" for US tech companies, and said that the outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden has failed to handle the situation.

"If some other country was interfering in another industry that we care about, the U.S. government would probably find a way to put pressure on them, but I think what's happened here is actually the exact opposite," he said. - "The U.S. government has led these attacks on companies that have then just made it so that the EU, in fact, in all these other places, is just free to just focus on all the American companies and do whatever they want.

Addendum

Zuckerberg's appearance on Rogan's podcast came just days after he announced that Meta would end its third-party fact-checking program and move to a so-called community note model. The move was widely interpreted as an attempt by Zuckerberg to curry favor with the new Trump administration, which has long denounced moderation policies as left-leaning censorship.

Recognizing the changing "legal and political landscape," Meta also said on Friday that it would end its Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) programs.