(DCNF)—President Joe Biden’s administration has refrained from pressing the European Union (EU) about its new law weighing heavily and disproportionately on American tech companies, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.
The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) officially came into effect Thursday and imposes penalties of up to 20% of a company’s yearly revenue for repeated violations. The DMA is antitrust regulation primarily targeting dominant platforms in the EU, mostly American companies like Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft; but the Biden administration did not firmly challenge the EU to mitigate potential detrimental impacts of the legislation on U.S. firms, according to the Post.
Industry groups sent a letter to the White House warning about the law, asserting “the DMA’s regulatory cudgel is pointed squarely at five leading American companies.” The Biden administration reportedly sent two letters to the EU expressing worries but it did not take a tough stance against it, individuals familiar with the situation told the Post.
The DMA targets “gatekeepers,” which are platforms that “provide an important gateway between businesses and consumers in relation to core platform services,” according to the European Commission. The DMA prohibits companies from operating in the EU in a way that gives their products and services special advantages, such as in app stores, search engines and web browsers. For instance, the DMA makes it illegal to compel companies to use a platform’s payment system to be on its app store, according to the EC.
“The Biden administration has made an intentional decision, and concerted effort, to work with the European Union,” Jorn Fleck, Europe Center senior director at the Atlantic Council, told the Post. “Not just ‘Europe’ writ large, not just through NATO which is the traditional go-to, not just through the bilateral relationships with key countries in Europe, but specifically also with the E.U.”
One letter notes the Biden administration’s opposition to the law targeting American companies, but does not contain warnings about it, based on the contents reported by Politico.
“We oppose efforts specifically designed to target only U.S. companies,” it states.
The Biden administration prioritized collaborating with the EU on the war in Ukraine over safeguarding American tech companies, according to the Post.
“The Ukraine situation has sucked the oxygen out of the room,” a U.S. industry executive told the Post. “The Biden administration has worked very hard to get the Europeans and the U.S. on the same page when it comes to national security type issues.”
Democratic lawmakers advocated for the president to enable the EU to enforce the DMA on American companies because it aligns with the Biden administration’s antitrust agenda, according to a December letter.
The White House and EU did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
Independent Journalism Is Dying
Ever since President Trump’s miraculous victory, we’ve heard an incessant drumbeat about how legacy media is dying. This is true. The people have awakened to the reality that they’re being lied to by the self-proclaimed “Arbiters of Truth” for the sake of political expediency, corporate self-protection, and globalist ambitions.
But even as independent journalism rises to fill the void left by legacy media, there is still a huge challenge. Those at the top of independent media like Joe Rogan, Dan Bongino, and Tucker Carlson are thriving and rightly so. They have earned their audience and the financial rewards that come from it. They’ve taken risks and worked hard to get to where they are.
For “the rest of us,” legacy media and their proxies are making it exceptionally difficult to survive, let alone thrive. They still have a stranglehold over the “fact checkers” who have a dramatic impact on readership and viewership. YouTube, Facebook, and Google still stifle us. The freer speech platforms like Rumble and 𝕏 can only reward so many of their popular content creators. For independent journalists on the outside looking in, our only recourse is to rely on affiliates and sponsors.
But even as it seems nearly impossible to make a living, there are blessings that should not be disregarded. By highlighting strong sponsors who share our America First worldview, we have been able to make lifelong connections and even a bit of revenue to help us along. This is why we enjoy symbiotic relationships with companies like MyPillow, Jase Medical, and Promised Grounds. We help them with our recommendations and they reward us with money when our audience buys from them.
The same can be said about our preparedness sponsor, Prepper All-Naturals. Their long-term storage beef has a 25-year shelf life and is made with one ingredient: All-American Beef.
Even our faith-driven precious metals sponsor helps us tremendously while also helping Americans protect their life’s savings. We are blessed to work with them.
Independent media is the future. In many ways, that future is already here. While the phrase, “the more the merrier,” does not apply to this business because there are still some bad actors in the independent media field, there are many great ones that do not get nearly enough attention. We hope to change that one content creator at a time.
Thank you and God Bless,
JD Rucker
