Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said President-elect Trump should block efforts in Europe and other countries to crack down on the U.S. technology industry.
Mr. Zuckerberg, who has been eager to court President Trump since the president-elect won the 2024 presidential election, appeared on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast last Friday and advocated for more government support. .
“I think it's a strategic advantage for the United States to have many of the most powerful companies in the world, and I think protecting that should be part of the U.S. strategy going forward,” Zuckerberg said. “One of the things that makes me optimistic about President Trump is that he just wants America to win.”
Over the past decade or so, EU antitrust authorities have imposed a series of severe fines totaling “more than $30 billion,” Zuckerberg added. Last July, the EU charged Meta with violating broad technology competition laws, which could ultimately result in fines of up to 10% of global revenue, or nearly $13.5 billion.
Mr Zuckerberg, who met with President Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, said the fines were “almost like tariffs” and “similar to EU-wide policy on how to deal with American technology”. He claimed that it had become a “thing”.
Zuckerberg said, “If other countries were ruining another industry that we care about, the U.S. government would probably find a way to put pressure on them in some way, but what's happening here? I think it's actually quite the opposite.”
President Trump has clashed with Zuckerberg and Mehta in the past. He has previously called Facebook the “true enemy of the people” and has repeatedly accused the social media giant of censorship and election interference.
But Mr. Zuckerberg has taken several steps to mend fences with the incoming administration. Those include appointing a Republican as the company's policy director, ending its fact-checking program and halting DEI efforts that have long irritated conservatives.
Zuckerberg is not the only major tech executive to pressure Trump to consider European enforcement action.
Last October, President Trump said he received a call from Apple CEO Tim Cook complaining that the company was facing billions of dollars in fines overseas.
“He[Cook]called me two or three hours ago,” Trump told podcaster Patrick Bett-David at the time. “He said the European Union imposed a $15 billion fine on us. …And they got another $2 billion in fines from the European Union,” Trump added.
During the nearly three-hour interview with Rogan, Zuckerberg said Biden executives called Meta executives and demanded that they remove negative posts about coronavirus vaccines on Facebook. He said he yelled, “shouted” and “cussed”.
He also criticized Meta's rival Apple, claiming that the company “hasn't invented anything really great in a while.”
