Envy is an ugly thing — one of the seven deadly sins.
Europeans have long been dripping with jealousy that American firms dominate the tech sector — cellphones, search engines, social media platforms, artificial intelligence and robotics. Our “magnificent seven” tech companies — including Google, Nvidia, Apple and Amazon — saw massive stocks market gains in 2024. Meanwhile, Europe has flatlined.
One reason for this success: The United States innovates while Europe regulates. Instead of fixing their economies, the European Union bureaucrats want to kneecap America’s tech success stories with lawsuits and regulatory barbed wire fences to keep American firms from competing on a level playing field.
Their first target was Google, with a rash of expensive antitrust lawsuits against search engines.
Even worse, the EU bureaucrats are waging war against Apple with the “Digital Markets Act” — a law that requires “contestable and fair markets in the digital sector.”
They are also demanding of Apple something called “interoperability,” which absurdly requires Apple to hand over access to its private operating systems to its competitors and will require iPhones to offer competitors’ applications. This makes as much sense as requiring McDonald’s to offer Burger King fries with their Happy Meals.
The iPhone’s amenities and apps are part of a package deal that have made these devices the most popular in the world, with billions of customers. This hardly sounds like monopolistic behavior. If people don’t like Apple’s apps, there are many other cellphone products (such as the Galaxy) made by Samsung, Google or other companies, including some in China, that consumers can turn to.
For all the talk about Apple’s monopoly, it now controls slightly less than 20% of the global cellphone market.
What is especially dangerous about interoperability is what it means for security and privacy. If third parties are given unfettered access to the Apple platform, this shield of privacy will be pierced.
Apple warns that outsiders could “read on a user’s device all of their messages and emails, see every phone call they make or receive, track every app that they use, scan all of their photos, look at their files and calendar events, log all of their passwords, and more.”
But the biggest danger of these kinds of raids on successful companies that spend billions of dollars innovating is that the incentive to innovate at all is stifled — in which case everyone loses. Sharing patented information with competitors in the name of “fairness” is a socialist idea that has rusted the Eurozone economy.
If Europe wants to get back in the tech game, EU bureaucrats should focus on what made these companies so successful in the first place — and then try to create a public policy environment that will foster innovative companies that can compete and win — rather than run to the courts for protection. Punishing the winners is a good way to keep producing losers.
In the meantime, let’s hope the incoming Trump regulators at the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department defend American companies against aggressive and hostile lawsuits to hobble our made-in-America companies. In other words, put America first, and don’t let Europe take a bite out of our Apple.
Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”
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Isn’t it ironic.., more than 100 years ago it was Europe, Germany to be exact leading innovation, that scared the pants off Britain and France, America trying to keep up Now that Europe is in the grip of EU there is no danger of innovation and America is a leading force.
It were not for ENVY and THEFT, the Class warfare of Socialist Progressives just wouldn’t have the sales luster of their worldview.
There is an old saying in the tech industry: Those that can innovate do and they tend to dominate the markets they operate in. Those that can’t, typically just rely on litigation to try and slow down the real market leaders, as well as try to make a few bucks in the process.
That is what Europe, especially the EU, is all about when it comes to technology at this point. You’ll notice the article highlights one American tech company after another, because they own or dominate the markets they operate in. They deliver the technology both people and companies need to solve real-world needs.
The EU plays this litigation game with Japan as well, but to a far lesser extent as the big players in the tech space are all American companies at this point. Europe has at best, less than a handful of major tech companies and most are also-rans at this point. The result of massive anti-growth policies and mountains of regulations, that made it cost prohibitive for tech start-ups to flourish. So, the EU resorts to filing a constant stream of lawsuits to try and make enough money to make themselves, at least in Belgium, still feel like they matter in the tech space of 2025.
It would have been far better for Europe to have scaled back their massive regulatory state, to incentivize innovation over the last 30 years, but now they are hopelessly too far behind the curve to ever catch up. Socialism isn’t known as a big proponent of innovation and risk taking.
I can’t believe what I’m reading! It’s like a chapter out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Published in the 1950s, Atlas Shrugged tells the story of John Galt who decides to stop the engine of the world by enticing business innovators to destroy their innovations so the world can’t use them, then retreat to “Galt’s Gulch” to live with like minded leaders until, and if, the world ever came to it’s senses. The government in this story drove them to this point by forcing them, under the mistaken belief of fairness, to share their patented innovations with their less intuitive competitors. Pure innovation killing socialism.
I’m sure the modern answer to this problem will be “Who is Donald Trump?”
Freedom and prosperity can never be multiplied by division and theft. Most thieves justify that they deserve what they steal. OJ’s stained shrunken gloves actually fit him.
Evil always ends up collapsing upon itself.
Europeans are victims their own hubris. In dealing with the Norwegians who are partners in many wind farm acquisitions here in in New England, the folks involved have found the Europeans to be overbearing, ignorant of the laws, and consider themselves without peer in the industry. But then, try and get something from them once you have made a deal. Europe deserves all the mess it has created of its own accord.
Well, maybe Apple should begin withdrawing service to Europe and let all their customers know why. Then perhaps all the the unhappy Apple customers will go after those bureaucrats and see what happens then.
Shameful stuff, without even a pretense of entrepreneurial spirit on the part of the regulating authority.
Good article,but at least Europe is letting in more Chinese EV’s than the U.S.Trump is a huge protectionist,so don’t expect any cheap Chinese EV’s anytime soon.Mexico is getting Chinese EV’s but I don’t know if they are legal to buy in Mexico and register in the U.S.