Trump threatens extra tariffs, tech export bans, for any nation that dares to regulate Big Tech
- Reference: 1756182550
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/08/26/trump_tech_tax_threat/
- Source link:
Trump took to Truth Social on Monday evening to [1]declare “As the President of the United States, I will stand up to Countries that attack our incredible American Tech Companies.”
“Digital Taxes, Digital Services Legislation, and Digital Markets Regulations are all designed to harm, or discriminate against, American Technology. They also, outrageously, give a complete pass to China's largest Tech Companies,” he added.
[2]
“This must end, and NOW!” his post continued, before promising “substantial additional Tariffs” on any nation that dares to persist with regulations, plus “Export restrictions on our Highly Protected Technology and Chips.”
[3]
[4]
“America, and American Technology Companies, are neither the ‘piggy bank’ nor the ‘doormat’ of the World any longer,” he added, before wrapping things up with a demand to “Show respect to America and our amazing Tech Companies or, consider the consequences!”
Bending the Truth
The post makes no mention of the following known facts about American Big tech companies:
Most are extraordinarily profitable;
Most use legal-but-cynical schemes to minimize tax, which is why many nations devised digital services taxes and other measures to ensure Big Tech pays its share;
The USA pulled out of the OECD’s comprehensive tax reforms, which aimed to prevent global companies – especially tech companies – from using legal-but-cynical schemes to minimize tax. Doing so meant other nations who wanted to tax Big Tech needed to consider other measures;
Several American tech companies are proven monopolists who abused market power at home and abroad;
Several offer services known to be harmful – especially social media companies – creating problems that other nations must pay to fix;
Chinese companies do not get a free pass: Many nations have regulated them with acts such as banning Huawei. Europe just took a swipe at [5]AliExpress . We could go on but you get the idea;
Trump himself has given Chinese company ByteDance and its social network TikTok a free pass by declining to enact a law that required it to divest its US operations or shut up shop stateside by January 19th, 2025. US Congress passed that law after finding TikTok is a threat to national security.
We could go on, but you get the idea. America’s tech companies are immensely powerful, efforts to rein them in have seldom succeeded, and China does not get a free pass.
EU may target US tech giants in tariff response [6]FROM THE ARCHIVES
Trump has [7]made threats like this before , but this time he has raised the stakes by adding the prospect of tech export bans.
Such bans would likely harm other US tech companies. Chipmakers aren’t subject to digital services taxes, and lost billions when the administration banned sales of all GPUs to China. A comprehensive tech export ban could defend Google and Meta by hurting Intel – which the USA [8]now partially owns – and the likes of Nvidia and AMD.
Recent history suggests two possible outcomes: The world will try to negotiate with Washington about this matter and end up making modest concessions the president claims as a win, or nothing happens because Trump’s posts are often thought bubbles. ®
Get our [9]Tech Resources
[1] https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115092243259973570
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aK2FvjSDfC_4SyVw9YR4eQAAAFE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aK2FvjSDfC_4SyVw9YR4eQAAAFE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aK2FvjSDfC_4SyVw9YR4eQAAAFE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/19/ec_aliexpress_investigation_finds_failings/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/07/eu_to_target_us_tech/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/24/trump_administration_dst_countertariffs/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/25/intel_gets_trumped/
[9] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Yes please call the orange pedo's bluff
Tell Trump to fuck off and that any tariffs he imposes will be matched tit for tat by the EU. His approval rating is falling fast as the economy gets worse and inflation in certain sectors - especially in the grocery store - is spiraling. Yes it will hurt the people of the EU temporarily, but it will hurt the people of the US more and they need to be hurt. The Trump voters need to touch the hot stove long enough to realize that even though the "libs" they want to "own" are getting burned they are getting burned just as badly.
Trump is speedrunning us towards a dictatorship with his talk about troops in the streets of major American cities. We won't have a fair election in 2026 if he's able to normalize that. His approval needs to tank badly enough that republican congressman feel it is better for their re-election chances to break with him than to blindly support him. The only way that happens is if the economy gets bad enough here that his support craters. The US came to Europe's aid during WW II to protect you from the shackles of dictatorship. Now we need you to come to our aid!
Re: Yes please call the orange pedo's bluff
Even Fox news biggest Trump supporters are saying how dumb his doings are, even labeling him "That is communism! He is doing what we thought democrats would be doing!" over his Intel "deal".
Re: Yes please call the orange pedo's bluff
Why should we match the tarriffs? Doesn't really matter. We don't import that much stuff from the US anyway.
Tax the techbro companies. And actually tax them and fine them to hell and back for breaches of GDPR, actually bring out the big guns (what was it, 4% of global turnover - not profit?).
As Gimli said "let him rot there".
Re: Yes please call the orange pedo's bluff
Matching another country's tariffs is not a punishment, it''s self harm. Trump is smacking himself in the face with tariffs, and the sensible response is to let him, not mimic him.
As it is, the UK is utterly dependent on American tech - from Google through to AMD, via Oracle and Microsoft (and Palantir if you're really lucky). We have almost no home-grown alternatives, and most of our public infrastructure depends on America to function, and most of our commercial online services. So we're not going to do a thing (regardless of the colour of the government).
Trump doesn't need to threaten us at all. Now go and buy something distracting from Amazon, pay with PayPal and watch Netflix, sucker.
Re: Yes please call the orange pedo's bluff
Amazon: only after exhausting all other possibilities. Down to less than once per year. I used to use Amazon to find a third party supplier then look for that supplier's direct sale website. Now I go to those websites directly.
I do not use Paypal. I do not watch Netflix.
If you feel trapped in a subscription deal for entertainment try your local second hand shop. Good films and box sets go for a pittance.
Re: Yes please call the orange pedo's bluff
Amazon is ok when, once a year, they offer you a month's free Prime, which you can use for video streaming (and, at least here, they even tell you where to go to cancel Prime the same day, then let the rest of the month ride out).
Only trouble is, I've done The Expanse twice, seen The Peripheral etc and this year can't spot anything worth the trouble.
Re: Yes please call the orange pedo's bluff
Examples only. Consider Mastercard, Stripe, Visa - The vast majority of online and in person payments go through American companies (see the recent issues over censorship of online platforms by the payment networks).
And the point here is not what the politically engaged do, it's what the majority of people in the UK do. "We" spend twice as much on Amazon as the annual government budget for housing and community amenities.As individuals, we can protest as much as we like, it doesn't significantly shift our dependency on America, particularly in public services.
Re: Yes please call the orange pedo's bluff
The EU will capitulate. It has capitulated already, and it will do so again. You give a bully an inch, they will be back for more.
Re: Tariffs please!
Indeed. The smart move would be to call the bluff. If he chickens out, problem solved. If he doesn't, we'll hurt but he'll hurt far more, and decoupling from US-based IT services will be really, really good for us in the medium/long term. We lack big high-end chip fabs? Sure, but ASML is Dutch.
The problem is that the EU is not a nation. It's a loose organization of 27 tiny-to-medium nations, that were waging war on each other until practically yesterday. It can't make any strong decision on foreign policy. It can barely prevent the 27 from wasting resources on screwing each other over. Every attempt to strengthen the EU is always met with fierce resistance by national governments. Until that changes, what we're seeing now is probably the best we can hope for.
The bloke's a twat
that's all I've got to say on the subject.
Re: The bloke's a twat
All that I will add is that he is a mindless bully.
OK, no upgrade needed for four more years anyway.
And when those four years are over all non-US competitors improved their products so well that US-products are inferior to those. History repeating. Again.
IT side specifically: Most stuff ist fast enough anyway and the improvements have slowed down a lot. Only special cases need more.
So as long as tat isn’t penalised, the tit promises somewhat favourable terms?
What kind of eejit believes a word he has to say?
We sadly have a couple on this forum that seems to believe everything he says.
I’m with Robert De Niro On this
“Fuck Trump”
*Undoes belt, pulls down left leg of pants to expose a butt cheek*
Pucker up, Donny!
Golden oppturnity
This is the right time to build sovereign tech companies by every nation. Never trust American
Re: Golden oppturnity
In the UK, the government is desperately propping up the vestiges of the steel industry after belatedly rediscovering its strategic importance. Steel was nationalised in 1949, denationalised in 1953, renationalised in 1967 and denationalised in 1988 (when it was making a modest profit) and subsequently declined as part of various conglomerates.
If you don't want to be subject to the whims of a hostile nation, being in control of your critical goods and services is a good idea in principle. However, that does require a commitment to manage those industries consistently over the long term and I don't really see the political consensus that would make that achievable in general.
IT is slightly more tractable: running IT operations in house would reduce the external dependencies without having to set up a rival superscale enterprise and would probably be broadly cost neutral. A few modest tax breaks might be all the encouragement required.
Oh no, woe is us
Oh please say this won't hurt Oracle, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, all the various AI bubbles and encourage development of alternatives outside the US.
Oh well, so sad, never mind.
You Will Respect My Authoritah
Oh, if only DT would act on Cartman's other great line:
Screw you guys, I'm going home!
Fuck MAGA...
Meta
Alphabet
Google (so bad they need to be named twice)
Apple
They can all afford to pay more taxes in each company they operate (whether they have an office there or not)
And each needs to be fined for the various harms they are the direct cause of
Not forgetting Microsoft
Lots of hot air in these comments
But what will the ('our') politicians do? On previous and current form, they will capitulate. They are spineless worms.
Tariffs please!
They hurt him far more than us. Technology export bans hurt both sides but I would go with a combination of smuggling and TACO. As a bonus we get to tax they only people he is cares about.