Meta is ready to bring Trump into play in fight against EU rules

'When companies are treated differently and in a way that is discriminatory against them, then that should be highlighted to that company’s home government,' said Joel Kaplan, a longtime Republic strategist.

By Gian Volpicelli

Meta Platforms Inc.’s global policy director said the technology giant “won’t shy away” from taking up its case with President Donald Trump if the European Union uses its digital rules to target Meta’s products.  

Joel Kaplan, a longtime Republic strategist whom Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg installed as chief of global affairs after Trump’s re-election, told the Munich Security Conference it’s up to the Trump administration to assess whether EU fines against US tech companies should be considered unfair — but that Meta will make its case if it feels singled out. 

“When companies are treated differently and in a way that is discriminatory against them, then that should be highlighted to that company’s home government,” Kaplan told a panel moderated by Stephanie Flanders, head of economics and government at Bloomberg, in the Bavarian capital Sunday. 

“While we want to work within the confines of the laws that Europe has passed — and we always will — we will point out when we think we’ve been treated unfairly,” Kaplan, who replaced Nick Clegg in January, said. 

Trump put the issue of EU fines on tech companies on his trade agenda, telling a crowd at the World Economic Forum last month in Davos that the measures amounted to a “form of taxation” — and cited “some very big complaints with the EU.” 

Kaplan spoke as transatlantic relations reached a new low at the Munich gathering, with Vice President JD Vance leading the US delegation and delivering a broadside against European leaders. He singled out EU regulations on social-media activity as a way to suppress free speech, including when they target far-right right groups championing issues such as migration. 

‘Tremendous Disadvantage’ 

Chancellor Olaf Scholz responded to the overture to right-wing parties, including the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, days before an election, as an unacceptable intervention in the country’s democratic process. 

While EU authorities have called restrictions on social-media platforms a way to curb hate speech and misinformation, Kaplan echoed Vance’s position that the rules risk impinging on free expression — and touted the company’s roll out of Community Notes, a way for users to fact-check content on its platforms. 

“We don’t want misinformation,” Kaplan said. “People have different perspectives of what is misinformation and what is not.” 

But Meta, which owns social media platforms Facebook and Instagram and messaging service WhatsApp, has fallen foul of the EU’s sweeping system of digital rulebooks, having been slapped with more than €2 billion ($2.1 billion) in penalties for breaching antitrust and data protection rules. 

The company is also being investigated under the EU’s content moderation law, the Digital Services Act — whose fines can reach 6% of a company’s global annual sales — for potentially failing to protect minors. In recent weeks, Meta has also signaled it likely won’t sign on to a code of conduct the EU is drafting for providers of advanced artificial intelligence models. 

Addressing a query on European competitiveness in the digital domain, Kaplan warned Europe against gauging the “success of its regulatory regime by the number and size of fines.” The bloc’s tech regulations have put its economy at a “tremendous disadvantage,” he said.