Donald Trump has vowed to launch a formal trade investigation into the European Union over EU fines on US tech companies, threatening a fresh wave of tariffs days after Brussels handed Google a combined €890 million penalty under its Digital Markets Act.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the EU would pay a ‘very big price’ and called for any fines to be ‘entirely reversed’. ‘The United States of America is not a “PIGGYBANK” for Europe, nor will we allow it to be!’ he wrote.
Two decisions, one record-breaking bill
The European Commission issued the €890 million total across two separate rulings. A €460 million fine covered Google favouring its own services over competitors in search results. The remaining €430 million related to restrictions that prevented app developers from directing customers to cheaper purchases outside Google Play, covering a period between March 2024 and December 2025.
The Commission ordered Google to end both violations and warned that further fines would follow if the company failed to comply. Google’s Kent Walker pushed back, stating: ‘Regulation should improve products, not make them worse,’ and accused the EU of dismantling safety protections on Google Play.
The penalties are the largest levied against a single company under the Digital Markets Act, surpassing the €500 million fine imposed on Apple and the €200 million penalty handed to Meta in 2025, according to Yahoo Finance.
EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said the Commission wanted ‘more competition and also other companies are able to innovate.’ Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera put it more bluntly: ‘The best products should succeed because they’re better, not because they’re owned by the company running the search engine.’
EU fines on US tech become a tariff flashpoint
Trump’s response goes well beyond the Google ruling. He named Apple, Meta, and Amazon alongside Google as companies that have been ‘treated badly’ by the EU, and claimed Apple had received EU fines of $15 billion, Meta $3 billion, and Amazon $2.5 billion. The BBC noted it was not clear where those figures came from.
US Trade Ambassador Jamieson Greer was more precise in his own criticism. ‘The EU’s various fines of Google alone add up to over 2 percent of the EU’s budget,’ he said, ‘a larger contribution to the budget than many EU member states.’ Greer also cited the EU’s announcement of a large state-backed loan to Airbus as further evidence of what he characterised as systematic targeting of competitive American companies, according to NOTUS.
The tariff threat lands at a fraught moment. The Google fine came just days before the first anniversary of a trade deal struck between Washington and Brussels that had eased earlier frictions. Trump’s ‘substantial TARIFF’ warning follows an announcement, just one day earlier, of new tariffs of between 10% and 12.5% on 60 trading partners including the EU, the UK, and China.
The broader pattern here is not new. Last month, Trump threatened a 100% import tariff on any country that introduces a digital services tax on American technology giants. Writing on Truth Social, he said: ‘Please let this statement serve to represent that any Country that imposes such a Tax will immediately be met with a 100% TARIFF on any and all Goods sent to the United States of America.’ He added that the tariff would ‘supersede Trade Deals made with the Country, whether implemented, signed, or not,’ according to The Hill.
The formal machinery is already moving. The US Trade Representative initiated Section 301 investigations into structural excess capacity across 16 trade partners, including the EU, on 11 March 2026, with White & Case reporting that the USTR aimed to complete the process and be prepared to impose tariffs by around 24 July 2026. That deadline is now days away.
Whether the EU will treat this as a genuine tariff risk or another opening bid in a negotiation it has learned to manage will shape how Brussels responds to the next round of DMA enforcement, which is already under way. Other US tech companies remain firmly in the Commission’s sights.
