{"id":15685,"date":"2025-04-13T05:30:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-13T05:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/15685\/"},"modified":"2025-04-13T05:30:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-13T05:30:10","slug":"european-union-faces-balancing-act-on-big-tech-taxes-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/15685\/","title":{"rendered":"European Union faces balancing act on Big Tech taxes \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The European Union has faced a delicate task in plotting its response to Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs. While Trump has suspended his so-called reciprocal tariffs for 90 days, both sides are now set for trade talks. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">So far, the EU has largely targeted products sourced from politically sensitive US states, mostly when they have voted for Republican politicians, when tariffs are put in place.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">That may be about to change. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has not ruled out taxing the likes of Google, Amazon, Meta and Elon Musk\u2019s X and the like if trade talks with the Trump administration fail. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">\u201cThere\u2019s a wide range of countermeasures &#8230; you could put a levy on the advertising revenues of digital services,\u201d she told the Financial Times.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">This could have profound implications for Ireland. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">As the European base for swathes of US Big Tech, with thousands of well-paid jobs in the sector and not to mention the billions in tax revenue the State takes in every year, this country would clearly take a hit from any move to penalise tech firms in some way. The Government knows this and so far as opposed such a move.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"c-image audio_image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/show-cover.jpg\"\/>Trump\u2019s tariffs: \u201cThe rest of the world is now going to de-risk from the United States\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">That\u2019s not to say the EU shouldn\u2019t do something. Countries such as France have long bridled at the fact that much of those firms\u2019 European tax is paid in the Republic and have been, reportedly, pitching for a levy on Big Tech in any trade war.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">It would also be a way to target a group of companies whose bosses \u2013 most notably Musk and Meta\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg \u2013 have cosied up to Trump. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">But would consumers wear it? It\u2019s an uncomfortable truth for Europe that there is almost no competitor on the Continent to the American firms. Sure, there are bit players here and there, but that\u2019s all they are. And that\u2019s before we consider the implications of targeting services in general.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">If anything is done to target US firms in this State, would people accept, for example, not using Gmail or Instagram? How about WhatsApp? Such issues will have to be taken into account before any such move is instigated. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">A levy makes sense on paper. The real world may not be so straightforward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Union has faced a delicate task in plotting its response to Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs. While Trump&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[9215,295,2000,299,5187,1699,867,598,10690,1220,2612,1605],"class_list":{"0":"post-15685","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-cantillon","9":"tag-elon-musk","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-google","15":"tag-meta","16":"tag-trump-presidency","17":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","18":"tag-us-tariffs","19":"tag-x"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114329015003153347","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}