Trump Administration Stakes Out Aggressive Stance on Foreign Tech Rules

As US President Donald Trump intensifies a global trade war, his administration is ratcheting up its attacks against foreign governments' regulations on American tech companies, raising the specter of ongoing levies unless nations ease off the industry.

On Wednesday, Trump announced he is largely pausing his sweeping new tariffs on most countries after many reached out to “negotiate a solution” on issues his administration has identified, including overseas “Trade Barriers.”

Yet despite the 90-day reprieve, foreign regulations impacting US tech companies remain a target for the administration.

In recent days, top Trump administration officials have repeatedly signaled they plan to pressure global leaders to pull back regulations they view as discriminatory toward the US tech sector.

The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) last week released a report that called out dozens of regulations placed on Silicon Valley by other countries as “digital trade barriers.”

The report took aim at a broad array of rules, including digital service taxes in Canada and Colombia, data localization laws in Algeria and Ecuador, data protection laws in Pakistan and Kenya, and Australia’s news “bargaining code.”

It also focused on the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), which USTR said “disproportionately” targets US firms and undermines American competitiveness. The report was hailed by industry groups, who previously denounced the Biden Administration for taking a more opposing tact on digital trade.

This week, the Trump administration directly linked those grievances from big tech with US tariff negotiations.

In a Financial Times op-ed on Monday, Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro lashed out at what he described as a “web of non-tariff barriers that continue to choke American industries,” including the “use of ‘lawfare’ in places like the EU to target America’s largest tech firms.”

A European Commission spokesperson pushed back, according to Euronews, saying the bloc “will not be conflating” trade and tech regulation in its talks with the US.

During a hearing on Wednesday, the US Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, testified to Congress that the US will not stand for “other countries discriminating against our champions” in the tech space.

“I know we’re having a national conversation politically on how to regulate digital tech, etc., but in no case can we allow discrimination to undermine our competitive advantage here,” he said.

Asked specifically about competition proposals like Japan’s that mirror the EU’s DMA, Greer reiterated that the US is “not going to let the European Union, or Korea, or any other jurisdiction set the rules for digital trade” and suggested it will be a factor in US tariff negotiations.

“This is certainly something that we can talk about in any negotiations that come up,” he said.

The remarks suggest the regulations could emerge as a priority in the trade talks.

While Trump’s top trade officials are aligning with the tech industry on the issue, his vice president, JD Vance, as a senator, was critical of the sector’s influence over trade policy. The issue has been an area of bipartisan concern on Capitol Hill. But so far, there’s been little public pushback on the issue from tech critics in Washington.