MATT MOWERS: Europe’s Anti-Tech Crackdown Is A Scam

Europe says it wants a fair trade deal with the United States. But behind the diplomatic handshakes and friendly press conferences, European leaders, particularly the bureaucrats in Brussels, are making moves to kneecap American companies before negotiations even begin. These aren’t efforts to level the playing field. They’re strategic moves to tilt it, ensuring Europe wins before the first handshake.

Fortunately, not every European leader is buying into this agenda. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has shown she’s willing to challenge the EU’s stale globalist consensus and stand shoulder to shoulder with President Trump. Their recent meeting sparked hope for a new era of transatlantic trade, one built on fairness, national sovereignty, and mutual respect rather than bureaucratic red tape.

But while reform-minded leaders like Meloni are pushing for real change, the unelected technocrats in Brussels are charging ahead with a digital protectionism agenda that directly targets American innovation. This isn’t about protecting consumers or promoting safety. It’s about locking in a permanent advantage for European firms by undercutting their American competitors.

Consider what Brussels has already done. The Digital Markets Act (DMA) singles out a tiny group of so-called “gatekeeper” companies, nearly all of them American, and hits them with burdensome, one-sided rules that no one else has to follow. The Digital Services Act (DSA) is supposed to be about regulating online speech, but in practice, it disproportionately applies to U.S. platforms. Then there’s the EU Cybersecurity Certification Scheme for Cloud Services (EUCS), which threatens to block or sideline American cloud providers based on a bogus pretense of “sovereignty.”

And now, European regulators are floating a new Digital Network Act, which could entangle American tech companies in an outdated telco regulatory scheme. The goal? To force U.S. firms to effectively subsidize Europe’s failure to innovate by propping up legacy European telecoms.

Make no mistake, this is not a good faith effort to promote safety, fairness, or competition. It’s an intentional strategy to rig the game and box out American companies before trade talks even begin. If the U.S. agrees to negotiations under these conditions, we’re walking into a setup. Europe is trying to hamstring our top innovators and then drag us into trade talks while we’re down a player.

This is why President Trump’s leadership at this juncture is so important. A main reason he was elected was because voters understood that he is the right person to handle these high-stakes trade talks and he will obtain the best deals possible for the American people. He knows that American innovation is our strength and that allowing the EU to stifle it unanswered would have disastrous long-term consequences. But what should the path ahead look like in our talks with the EU?

Congress and U.S. trade negotiators should use this moment to force the EU to back off its anti-American tech war. They should ensure we are not offering special treatment for foreign firms while American companies are buried under red tape and slammed with billions in unfair fines. And we should be skeptical of any deal that sacrifices the future of American innovation on the altar of globalist appeasement.

Europe wants access to American markets, and that’s fine. But if they want to sell to our consumers, they don’t get to ban our cloud providers or sabotage our tech companies. The United States should not play along with Brussels’ game. We should rewrite the rules on our terms and defend the industries that drive American prosperity.

Matt Mowers is a EU-US Forum Founding Board Member and former Trump Administration Senior White House Advisor at the U.S. Department of State.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.