The United States has threatened to retaliate against European service providers, alleging discrimination against U.S. companies after the European Union imposed a fine on Elon Musk’s social media platform X.
The European Commission fined X EU€120 million (A$213 million) earlier this month for violations of the bloc’s Digital Services Act. This included allowing users to pay for a blue checkmark that indicates they have a verified account, without “meaningfully verifying” the account’s origin.
“The European Union and certain EU Member States have persisted in a continuing course of discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines, and directives against U.S. service providers,” the office of the U.S. Trade Representative wrote on X.
“If the EU and EU Member States insist on continuing to restrict, limit, and deter the competitiveness of U.S. service providers through discriminatory means, the United States will have no choice but to begin using every tool at its disposal to counter these unreasonable measures. Should responsive measures be necessary, U.S. law permits the assessment of fees or restrictions on foreign services, among other actions.”
The U.S. Trade Representative’s post does not specifically cite the fine imposed on X. It singles out companies including Accenture, SAP, Spotify, Siemens, and DHL as European service providers operating in the U.S.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had previously called the EU’s fine on X “an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments”. Officials including Vice President JD Vance and Federal Communications Commission head Brendan Carr also harshly criticised the fine.
Musk, X’s CEO, called for the EU to be abolished. Musk is a major Republican donor and an on-and-off ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, and has been committing funds to Republican campaigns ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
The European Commission’s two-year investigation also found that X’s advertisement repository did not meet the EU’s transparency requirements, and that it had refused to provide researchers with access to its public data. X has 60 working days from 5 December to offer the EU a plan to address its use of verified checkmarks.
Related content
