Trump says Apple boss called him to complain about EU

Donald Trump said on Thursday, he has been on a phone call with Apple’s Chief Executive Officer, Tim Cook and the latter complained about the European Union.

He quotes Mr Cook claiming he was worried with recent fines imposed within the EU, such as an order for Apple to pay Ireland €13bn in unpaid taxes in September this year.

In a podcast released on Thursday, Mr Trump, the candidate of the ruling Republican Party in the upcoming US Presidential Election said this.

The BBC has requested a reply from Apple.

Speaking to Patrick Bet-David in the PBD Podcast, Mr Trump said that the Apple CEO had called him a few hours earlier to whine about penalties that the firm had to part with resulting from the violation of EU regulations.

He said Mr Cook had informed him of an EU $15bn fine which Mr Trump said was, ‘that’s a lot’.

“They not only lost almost $4.2 billion yearly but then they got fined by the European Union another $2 billion,” Mr Trump noted, “so that’s a $17 to $18 billion fine.”

Apple and the Irish government have been entangled in a legal battle over unpaid taxes for some time and the former lost the case in September.

The Luxembourg-based EMAIL verdict endorses an allegation by the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, that Ireland provided Apple with preferential treatment on taxes.

In 2016, Mr Cook called the Commission’s assessment as “political” and complained that Ireland was being singled out.

The European Commission slapped Apple €1.8bn fine several months earlier in March for what it said the company has violated music streaming rules – a victory for Spotify.

As Mr Trump put it, the chief executive of Apple made a comment about the EU using money collected through antitrust fines to run an “enterprise.”

The money which firms receive from the EU competition rules pay the fines from the antitrust go directly to the general budget of the EU bloc and “contributes towards financing the EU and hopefully less burden to the taxpayer,” according to the Commission.

This fine is meant to punish companies that have violated competition rules, as well also discourage them, and others form such behavior.

‘The fine is usually calculated with reference to the scale of the infringement and its duration,’ the Commission officials said to BBC News.

For example, all companies are welcome in the EU if they are willing to follow those rules and legislation.

Mr Trump said that he told Mr Cook he would not allow the EU to take advantage of our companies, but he has to win the election first.

The former president has used part of his campaign to seek out influential tech personalities and entrepreneurs, with Tesla and X or Twitter’s Musk among those in support of Mr Trump.

He also claims to have spoken to Google head Sundar Pichai this week and reportedly had talked to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at least twice in August.

'Regulatory uncertainty'

The EU approach in their administration of the various large tech firms is not well illicit by Mr Musk, and the chiefs of other large tech firms.

This bloc has guidelines and standards that firms need to meet so as to be able to provide their digital goods and or services in the bloc.

These are the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and its Digital Markets Act (DMA) as well as the Digital Services Act.

Of its two digital laws, one is a stewardship code to regulate dominant “gatekeeper” technology companies, second one is a consumer regulator that seeks to increase consumer choice and the third one is a safety notice that protects the users of online platforms or services from unlawful or injurious contents.

Apple has previously argued that breaking open services such as its app store to third parties, as mandated by the DMA, could harm consumers.

Some technologically driven companies also worried by the EU’s recently enacted Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act on harmonizing rules of products based on risks.

It will also increase the disclosure by producers of general purpose AI systems on data used to train their models.

Meta executive Nick Clegg has described the slow deployment of generative AI products in the EU as due to “regulatory uncertainty”.

Apple has also specifically mentioned that its own array of generative AI features won’t be arriving on iPhones in the EU where they are available elsewhere as soon as possible.