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Comment by marceldegraaf

7 days ago

VAT is not a "sneaky backdoor tax", it's imposed on all goods, regardless of where they're produced or imported from.

DMA (and similarly, GDPR) are enforced in EU countries just as much. It's just that the US tends to have more gigantic tech companies that do shady things with user data. Apparently the US doesn't care, but the EU actually does, and so it enforces its laws.

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marceldegraaf

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jbverschoor  7 days ago

If anything is sneaky, it's the way how the in US you never see salestax until you're about to pay :D

pembrook  7 days ago

We’re talking many 10s of billions in “fines” specifically levied against US tech firms where there is no EU competitor.

I don’t necessarily disagree with all of the laws themselves (some are incompetent EU risk aversion, some are good protections) but given the massive never ending fines being applied in bad faith and constantly moving goalposts it is indeed a defacto tariff on US tech firms.

  • jonathanstrange  7 days ago

    The fines are not imposed in bad faith, they're imposed for actual, provable violations of the law. Companies who do not violate the law are not fined. Complaining about fines is another way of saying "We'd like to trade in the EU while violating EU laws that every EU company also has to adhere to."

    • pembrook  7 days ago

      The laws are specifically designed to target US firms without affecting EU ones and enforcement of fines and the size of them is highly selective -- the most attractive targets with the highest willingness to pay without getting to the point where they would pull out of the market.

      If you do not see the moral hazard in this, I don't know what else I can tell you. If the EU had a seriously competitive tech industry, many of these laws would have never been created, as the EU is not some moral believer in privacy (they fight against encryption domestically), they are just run-of-the-mill protectionists like all governments.

      6 replies →

    • 0xy  7 days ago

      You're trying to claim a law that is exclusively used to fleece U.S. companies and never EU competitors is 'not bad faith'?

      When has the DMA been used against EU tech companies? Never.

      Your comment also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the DMA and GDPR laws. Neither of them are objective laws, and they are applied subjectively without guidance.

      Let me be very clear: the EU does not tell you how to comply with either the DMA or the GDPR, period. The law is extremely vague and does not prescribe how to comply in any way, shape or form.

      8 replies →

    • sam_lowry_  7 days ago

      > provable violations of the law

      If you ever tried reading GDPR or DMA... you will realize pretty quickly that there is little meaning in them.

      I am totally unsure someone can prove a DMA violation. It's simpler with GDPR because a lot of concepts from it have been already somehow interpreted and agreed upon. But we do not have case law in EU, so I guess even known GDPR violations are often dubious.

0xy  7 days ago

DMA is applied equally, you say. How interesting! Can you link me to the examples of the EU going after EU companies for DMA violations? I couldn't find a single one. Not a single case, ever.

The EU wanted to fine Google $35,000,000,000 under DMA. That's a backdoor tax. No European tech company faces this scrutiny. Never have, never will -- because the DMA is a tax on the United States.

It's also interesting that the Google and Meta DMA fines are expected to land in the next week. What a timing coincidence, almost like it's retaliatory (as many articles have suggested).