Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman
Technology companies such as Alphabet, Meta, and OpenAI need to wake up to an unpleasant reality. By getting close to U.S. President Donald Trump, they risk losing access to one of their biggest markets: Europe.
Just a decade ago, these companies believed that information technology would limit the power of governments and liberalize the world. But then, as globalization withered and the U.S. confrontation with China took hold, they tried to take advantage of growing geopolitical divides, enlisting on Washington’s side in the new technological cold war. Now, the new Trump administration appears less enthusiastic about fighting China than it is about subjugating U.S. allies in the European Union and elsewhere. U.S. tech companies extract billions of dollars in profits from European markets. Although many of these tech companies would love to take the EU regulatory state down a peg, they don’t want to get caught in the crossfire of an all-out EU-U.S. tech war.
Unfortunately for Big Tech, such a war may be about to erupt. The Trump administration’s evident contempt for Europe may not only endanger the business interests of European companies. It could also spell the end of today’s open Internet, as Europeans look to build alternative platforms to those of the giant U.S. tech firms.
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