Trump can’t give up the fight against foreign meddling in US tech

President Donald Trump last month got Canada to kill a blatantly unfair tax on US-based companies, but the fight against foreign meddling in America’s tech industry has a long way to go.

Canada’s Digital Services Tax was set to slap companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Uber and Airbnb with a 3% levy on revenue from Canadian users — until Trump canceled trade talks over what he rightly slammed as an “egregious” move.

Prime Minister Mark Carney promptly nixed the fee hours before it would’ve kicked in.

Good: The tax was a shameless cash grab at the expense of American companies — and it was retroactive, demanding US-based tech firms fork over a whopping $2 billion.

Note that the Biden administration also opposed the tax, and even whined that it might violate the USMCA trade agreement — but did nothing to actually stop it.

Making Carney back down is fresh proof that Trump’s big-stick trade tactics can work — and work to protect cutting-edge knowledge-based industries, not just brick-and-mortar manufacturing.

It also shows that, despite all the ink spilled over Elon Musk’s tiff with Trump, the tech industry still has plenty of reason to stay friendly with the administration.

Especially since, as the prez pointed out on TruthSocial, Canada was just seeking to copy the European Union, which shamelessly uses its Digital Markets and Digital Services Acts to fill its coffers and bend US tech to its will.

Six of seven tech companies the European Commission has highlighted as “gatekeepers” to be reined in are American: Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Booking.com.

The EU has already hit Apple and Meta this year with massive fines for allegedly breaking the Digital Markets Act’s antitrust rules.

Far worse: The Digital Services Act chills free expression by threatening steep financial repercussions against companies that allow speech that the EU considers “disinformation,” “hate speech” or threats to “civil discourse” — concepts so nebulous that it’s hard to see how companies can comply without stomping on the First Amendment.

It’s beyond unacceptable for Brussels to determine what Americans can say on American–owned sites.

The EU’s legal harassment of US-based tech firms is so egregious that Trump aide Peter Navarro slammed it as “lawfare” in April.

These “fines” are basically tariffs by another name — milking successful American companies by creating strict regulations that target them especially.

Canada clearly meant to get its own slice of that pie, only for Trump to slap down Ottowa’s grasping hand.

Making the Europeans back off should be high on the president’s agenda as he starts his next tariff offensive.

Don’t let America’s trade partners reap the benefits of our thriving, innovative tech industry while spitting on the free-speech and free-market ideals that make it possible.