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(Bloomberg) — The European Union\u2019s antitrust chief ruled out easing the bloc\u2019s tech rulebook, after US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Brussels needed to change its digital regulations in order to get a deal to lower steel and aluminum tariffs.<\/p>\n
Lutnick said in an interview with Bloomberg on Monday that the US would grant the EU a \u201ccool steel and aluminum\u201d agreement in exchange for rolling back its tech rules. The US imposes a 50% levy on European imports of the metals.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe European digital rulebook is not up for negotiation,\u201d Teresa Ribera, a vice president at the European Commission, said in a statement late Monday. \u201cWe, Europeans, have adopted our rules to ensure fair markets and to protect consumers rights while securing Europe\u2019s digital future.\u201d <\/p>\n
Lutnick\u2019s direct linkage between steel duties and tech rules puts the EU in a difficult position as it struggles to win tariff exemptions from the US. President Donald Trump has chided the EU \u2014 which he has said was created to \u201cscrew\u201d the US \u2014 over its trade surplus in goods and perceived barriers to American trade.<\/p>\n
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says the US has talked with the European Union about rolling back tech rules in exchange for \u201ca cool steel and aluminum deal.\u201d Lutnick discusses conditions for any steel, aluminum deal with the EU on \u201cBloomberg Surveillance.\u201dSource: Bloomberg <\/p>\n
Trump has specifically called out the EU\u2019s digital regulations as the kind of non-tariff trade barrier that his so-called reciprocal tariffs are intended to target, with the White House signaling previous EU penalties as a form of duty.<\/p>\n
Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met with EU technology czar Henna Virkkunen earlier Monday to discuss digital regulations. Virkkunen stressed the importance of the bloc\u2019s two central tech rulebooks, the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, which regulate online platforms and marketplaces, according to the European Commission.<\/p>\n
Lutnick said the EU needed to resolve outstanding legal cases it\u2019s taken against American tech giants, including Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google, Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. <\/p>\n
Despite Trump\u2019s threats, the EU has pressed ahead with enforcement of its digital antitrust rules, with recent fines against Apple Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. of \u20ac500 million ($576 million) and \u20ac200 million respectively.<\/p>\n
Previously, the EU issued costly penalties against other firms, including more than $8 billion in fines against Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google and a separate order for Apple to pay Ireland back taxes of \u20ac13 billion. Those, however, were done under traditional competition law and not using the bloc\u2019s Digital Markets Act.<\/p>\n
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Lutnick and Greer were in Brussels for their first official visit since the EU and US reached a trade deal in July. The deal set a 15% US tariff on many EU goods, while the EU pledged to remove tariffs on US industrial products as well as some agricultural and food items.<\/p>\n
The EU is particularly concerned that the breadth of goods hit by the 50% metals rate \u2014 currently surpassing 400 items \u2014 as well as potential new, higher levies on different industries will dilute the EU-US trade deal and the agreed 15% tariff ceiling, Bloomberg reported earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea is if they take the foot off this regulatory framework and make it more inviting for our companies, they can get the benefit of hundreds of billions, possibly $1 trillion of investment,\u201d Lutnick said.<\/p>\n
After Monday\u2019s meetings, EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic said he wanted to reassure Lutnick that the bloc\u2019s digital rules \u201care not discriminatory\u201d and \u201cnot aimed at US companies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s our duty to preserve our values and to defend our people,\u201d Ribera said.<\/p>\n
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\u00a92025 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Bloomberg) — The European Union\u2019s antitrust chief ruled out easing the bloc\u2019s tech rulebook, after US Commerce Secretary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[7904,28,101,13390,5335,7262,8148,942,75575],"class_list":["post-311686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-bloomberg","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-european-commission","tag-european-union","tag-henna-virkkunen","tag-howard-lutnick","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-teresa-ribera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}