Zuckerberg calls on Trump to stop EU fines on US tech companies
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (photo: Getty Images)
The Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the US government under the leadership of new President Donald Trump should prevent the EU from fining American technology companies. We are talking about fines for violating antitrust rules and committing other offenses, Politico reports.
"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 it should be part of the U.S. strategy going forward to defend that. And it's one of the things that I'm optimistic about with President Trump," Zuckerberg said.
Politico specifies that Zuckerberg complained that the EU has forced American tech companies operating in Europe to pay more than $30 billion in fines for violating the law over the past two decades.
In particular, in November 2024, the Meta conglomerate, which operates Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other social media and communication platforms, was fined €797 million for violating EU antitrust rules by imposing unfair trading conditions on advertising service providers.
Zuckerberg argued that the European Commission's application of competition rules is “almost like a tariff” for US tech companies. He said that the outgoing Biden administration had failed to deal with the situation.
"The US government led the kind of attack against the companies, which then just made it so the EU is basically in all these other places, just free to just go to town on all the American companies and do whatever you want," the Meta CEO added.
Zuckerberg made these statements on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. According to Politico, his appearance in this interview came just minutes after he announced that Meta would end its third-party fact-checking program and switch to a so-called community note model. The move was widely interpreted as an attempt by Meta's CEO to garner support from the Trump administration, which has long denounced the moderation policy as left-leaning censorship.
Recognizing the changing “legal and political environment,” Meta also announced yesterday that it would suspend its diversity, equality, and inclusion programs.
Recently, Mark Zuckerberg apologized for censorship on Facebook and announced plans to expand freedom of speech on the company's platforms with the support of the Trump administration.
