Von der Leyen defends EU tech rules as Trump threatens tariffs

Ursula von der Leyen used her third State of the Union address to draw a red line around the European Union's digital rulebook, telling members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg that the bloc will not dilute the Digital Services Act or the Digital Markets Act in response to threats from Washington. The declaration comes less than three weeks after Donald Trump warned that the two regulations are "designed to harm" American technology companies and that he would impose tariffs on any country that enforces them.

A prepared confrontation in the hemicycle

The Commission president's language was deliberately unambiguous. "I want to be crystal clear on one point: whether on environmental or digital regulation, we set our own standards, we set our own regulations," she said, addressing a hemicycle that included several national leaders invited for the occasion. The phrasing echoed her 2023 address, when she framed the EU's legislative autonomy as a geopolitical necessity rather than a procedural preference. This time the target was explicit: a US administration that has moved from quiet diplomatic pressure to public tariff threats within the space of a single summer.

The timing is not accidental. The State of the Union is the Commission's set-piece moment to define the political agenda for the coming year. By placing digital sovereignty at the centre of the speech, von der Leyen signals that the confrontation with Washington will shape the next legislative cycle, from the review of the DSA's very large online platform designations to the first major DMA compliance decisions expected before the end of 2025.

Trump's August ultimatum and the trade deal context

Trump's threat arrived on 22 August, barely a week after the EU and the United States finalised a bilateral trade agreement covering critical minerals, standards cooperation and regulatory dialogue. The president told reporters the DSA and DMA "discriminate against American companies" and warned that "if they don't change their laws, we'll put tariffs on their cars, on their agricultural products, on everything they sell into the United States." The rhetoric mirrors his first-term approach to digital services taxes, when France, Italy and Spain faced Section 301 investigations and threatened retaliation.

What distinguishes the current episode is the scope of the regulations targeted. The DSA imposes systemic risk assessments, algorithmic transparency and illegal content takedown obligations on platforms with more than 45 million monthly active users in the EU. The DMA designates gatekeepers, currently Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft, and bans a list of anti-competitive practices including self-preferencing and mandatory bundling. Both laws apply equally to European and non-European firms, a point the Commission has repeated in every bilateral meeting since the legislation was proposed in 2020.

What the DSA and DMA actually require

The Digital Services Act, fully applicable since 17 February 2024, creates a graduated regime. Very large online platforms and very large online search engines, those above the 45 million user threshold, must conduct annual independent audits, publish transparency reports on content moderation and recommendation systems, and provide vetted researchers access to data for systemic risk studies. Non-compliance can attract fines of up to 6 per cent of global annual turnover. The Digital Markets Act, applicable from 2 May 2023 with gatekeeper designations confirmed in September 2023, prohibits specific behaviours such as preventing users from uninstalling pre-installed apps, using non-public data to compete with business users, and requiring developers to use a gatekeeper's payment services. Fines reach 10 per cent of worldwide turnover, rising to 20 per cent for repeated infringements.

Neither law names US companies. The gatekeeper list includes TikTok owner ByteDance, a Chinese entity, and the DSA's very large platform designations cover companies from multiple jurisdictions. However, the economic weight of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft means the compliance burden falls disproportionately on American firms. That asymmetry is the source of Washington's frustration, even though the criteria are market-share based and nationality-blind.

Internal Commission unity and the trade deal lever

Behind von der Leyen's public stance lies a coordinated internal position. Executive Vice-Presidents Stéphane Séjourné, responsible for prosperity and industrial strategy, and Teresa Ribera, in charge of the clean, just and competitive transition, have both told member state representatives that the August trade agreement contains a regulatory cooperation chapter that would be rendered meaningless if the US unilaterally penalises EU legislation. According to officials briefed on the discussions, the Commission's legal service has prepared an opinion concluding that retaliatory tariffs targeting specific laws would violate World Trade Organization non-discrimination principles, giving the EU grounds for a dispute settlement case.

The trade deal itself, formally the EU-US Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Partnership, does not mention the DSA or DMA. Its regulatory dialogue mechanism is designed for future alignment on standards for batteries, hydrogen and raw materials. Commission insiders argue that using the agreement as leverage, threatening to suspend it if tariffs are imposed, would be politically risky but legally defensible, because the US would be breaching the spirit of the cooperation framework. No formal decision has been taken; the language from Séjourné and Ribera remains conditional.

Months of quiet pressure before the public break

Trump's August outburst was the culmination of a sustained lobbying campaign. Since the start of his second term in January 2025, the US Trade Representative's office has raised the DSA and DMA in every meeting of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council, the bilateral forum re-established in 2021. American industry groups, led by the Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice, have submitted detailed complaints arguing that the DSA's risk assessment methodology is vague, that the DMA's gatekeeper criteria capture firms below true monopoly scale, and that enforcement discretion creates unpredictable compliance costs. The US mission to the EU in Brussels has circulated non-papers requesting a "regulatory pause" pending a joint review.

The Commission rejected each request. In March, the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) published its first DSA enforcement report, showing 23 formal proceedings opened against very large platforms since February 2024, with preliminary findings of non-compliance against X, Meta and AliExpress. In June, the Directorate-General for Competition (DG COMP) sent DMA non-compliance findings to Apple over its App Store steering rules and to Alphabet over Google Search self-preferencing. Both investigations proceed on statutory timetables that the Commission insists cannot be politicised.

European Parliament backing and member state calculations

Von der Leyen's Strasbourg audience included a Parliament that has consistently strengthened the digital laws during the legislative process. The lead negotiators on the DSA and DMA, Christel Schaldemose for the Socialists and Andreas Schwab for the European People's Party, sat in the front rows. Their presence was a reminder that the legislation passed with cross-party majorities exceeding 500 votes in a 705-seat chamber. Any attempt by the Commission to water down enforcement would require Parliamentary consent, which is politically implausible.

Member states are less unified. France and Germany have historically championed the DMA as a tool to create space for European cloud and software firms. Ireland, host to the European headquarters of most targeted US companies, has privately urged a pragmatic enforcement approach to avoid destabilising its tax base. The Nordic and Baltic states prioritise transatlantic security cooperation and fear a trade war that could spill into defence procurement. Poland, holding the Council presidency until December, has tried to mediate, proposing a high-level EU-US digital regulatory dialogue separate from the Trade and Technology Council. The Commission has not formally responded.

The broader transatlantic technology fracture

The DSA-DMA dispute sits atop a widening stack of disagreements. The EU's Artificial Intelligence Act, which entered into force on 1 August 2024, classifies general-purpose AI models trained with more than 10^25 floating point operations as systemic risk, a threshold that currently captures only US-developed models. The Data Act, applicable from September 2025, mandates data portability for connected devices, affecting US industrial internet-of-things providers. The Cyber Resilience Act, entering force in 2027, imposes security-by-design requirements on software sold in the EU. Washington views the cumulative effect as a regulatory wall; Brussels views it as the completion of a single market for data and digital services.

There is also the unresolved issue of cross-border data flows. The EU-US Data Privacy Framework, adopted in July 2023, replaced the invalidated Privacy Shield. Its first annual review, due in October 2025, will examine whether US intelligence surveillance safeguards meet the "essentially equivalent" standard required by the Court of Justice. A negative finding would suspend transfers, crippling cloud and advertising revenue for US firms. The Commission has linked the review's timeline to the broader regulatory climate, signalling that tariff escalation could harden its assessment.

What happens next: deadlines and decision points

The immediate calendar is crowded. The Commission must publish its first DMA compliance decisions on Apple and Alphabet before the end of October. The DSA's first systemic risk audit reports from very large platforms are due in November. The Trade and Technology Council meets in Washington in early December, the first ministerial session since the tariff threat. The EU-US Data Privacy Framework review concludes the same month. And the European Council summit on 18-19 December will discuss the transatlantic relationship, with the digital file explicitly on the agenda at the request of the Baltic states.