President-elect Trump ought to push again on efforts in Europe and different international locations to crack down on the US tech trade, based on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg, who has scrambled to ingratiate himself with Trump because the president-elect’s win within the 2024 presidential election, made the case for stronger authorities help throughout an look on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast final Friday.
“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 US strategy going forward to defend that,” Zuckerberg mentioned. “It’s one of the things I’m optimistic about with President Trump is, I think he just wants America to win.”
EU antitrust officers have imposed a sequence of harsh fines totaling “more than $30 billion” over the past decade or so, Zuckerberg added. Final July, the EU charged Meta with violating its sweeping tech competitors regulation – which might finally end in fines of as much as 10% of its international income, or practically $13.5 billion.
Zuckerberg, who met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, argued the fines are “almost like a tariff” and have develop into “sort of like an EU-wide policy for how they want to deal with American tech.”
“If some other country was screwing with another industry that we cared about, the US government would probably find some way to put pressure on them, but I think what happened here is actually the complete opposite,” Zuckerberg mentioned.
Trump has traditionally clashed with Zuckerberg and Meta – as soon as referring to Fb as “a true enemy of the people” and repeatedly accusing the social media large of censorship and election interference.
Nevertheless, Zuckerberg has taken a number of steps to fix fences with the incoming administration – together with appointing a Republican as the corporate’s high coverage government, ending fact-checking packages and killing DEI initiatives which have lengthy irritated conservatives.
Zuckerberg isn’t the one Massive Tech government who has pressed Trump to weigh in on Europe’s enforcement actions.
Final October, Trump mentioned he had acquired a name from Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner – who grumbled that the iPhone maker has confronted billions of {dollars} in fines abroad.
“Two hours ago, three hours ago, he (Cook) called me,” Trump advised podcaster Patrick Guess-David on the time. “He said the European Union has just fined us $15 billion. … Then on top of that they got fined by the European Union another $2 billion,” Trump added.
Throughout his practically three-hour interview with Rogan, Zuckerberg mentioned Biden officers had phoned executives at Meta to “scream” and “curse” at them whereas demanding that they take away any destructive posts in regards to the coronavirus vaccine on Fb.
He additionally criticized Meta rival Apple, asserting that the corporate hasn’t “really invented anything great in a while.”
