White House calls EU fines on Apple and Meta ‘economic extortion’
The White House on Wednesday condemned EU fines on Apple and Meta Platforms, labeling them a “novel form of economic extortion” that the U.S. will not accept. On Wednesday, EU antitrust regulators imposed fines of €500 million ($570 million) on Apple and €200 million on Meta, marking the first penalties under the EU’s Digital Markets Act regulatory regime.
Steve Holland and Kanishka Singh for Reuters:
The fines were seen as a development that could stoke tensions between the EU and U.S. President Donald Trump who has threatened to levy tariffs against countries that penalize American companies.
The White House on Wednesday called the legislation, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), discriminatory… “This novel form of economic extortion will not be tolerated by the United States,” a White House spokesperson said. “Extraterritorial regulations that specifically target and undermine American companies, stifle innovation, and enable censorship will be recognized as barriers to trade and a direct threat to free civil society.”
MacDailyNews Take: Economic extortion, it is.
As we wrote yesterday, “Of course Apple should appeal the ludicrous demand that it should be forced to allow developers to abuse its App Store to post free advertisements for lower prices elsewhere.”
The European Union arose because the Europeans couldn’t compete on their own with the rest of the world, so they each lined up to surrender their national sovereignty, unique cultures, and dignity for an undemocratic, opaque, wasteful, bloated, bureaucratic quasi-governmental blob – and, even with the EU’s thumbs all over the scale, they still can’t compete. — MacDailyNews, March 4, 2024
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