The European Commission fines Google 890 million, at the risk of provoking the wrath of Trump

While not a week goes by without, in one way or another, Donald Trump looming the threat of a new increase in customs duties on European imports, the European Commission announced, Thursday July 23, to impose a fine of 890 million euros on Google, under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which seeks to ensure fair competition on the markets.

A few days before the first anniversary, Monday July 27, of the Turnberry Agreement, signed on the American president’s Scottish golf course, transatlantic relations are far from peaceful. Especially since the American Supreme Court judged the system then adopted to be illegal – an exemption from customs duties for most American imports to the Old Continent, a 15% surcharge for European products crossing the Atlantic – and the White House must, shortly, present a substitution mechanism, of which nothing has yet leaked.

Brussels assures, for its part, that it does not legislate according to the moods of Donald Trump, seeming to forget that, in the past, it has happened, precisely in the context of its digital regulations so vilified across the Atlantic, to postpone decisions in order not to anger Washington at the worst moment. “Today’s decision will not surprise the American administration”confides a senior European official, suggesting that she has been warned.

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