Big Tech's Delicate Alliance With Trump
AI and copyright in the balance in Europe
U.S. technology companies and their executives’ cynical refashioning of themselves as MAGA-friendly champions of “America First” chauvinism to curry favor with Donald Tramp has been a tawdry and embarrassing spectacle, from Mark Zuckerberg’s giddy endorsement of the need for more “masculine energy” in American corporate culture to Jeff Bezos’ doling out $40 million in Amazon cash for rights to produce “The Melania Trump Story.”
But so far, all the money and flattery hasn’t bought them as much as they no doubt hoped for. Trump’s Federal Trade Commission is still fighting in court to break up Meta and the Justice Department is still gunning to dismantle Google’s search empire. Trump’s tariffs, meanwhile, threaten to blow up Amazon’s supply chain and could hit Apple with a $900 million bill in the current quarter alone.
There is one area, however, where Big Tech’s alignment with Trump is paying dividends, whether out of conviction or simply a confluence of interests: Europe.
The European Union is in the process of finalizing its AI Code of Practice, meant as a blueprint for technology companies to ensure they are complying with the requirements of AI Act. Through three rounds of revisions, however, the Code has gotten significantly watered down in terms of what is expected of AI developers.
To some extent, those revisions reflect changes in the makeup of the European Commission, the EU’s executive, whose members rotate every five years. Current Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, has made a priority of promoting European innovation and economic development by pruning some of the EU’s thicket of regulations.
But the drafting process has been criticized by rights owners and representatives of the creative industries for drifting away from the initial version of the Code’s emphasis on compliance with copyright rules by AI companies. And they have accused the Commission of being unduly influenced by U.S. technology companies.
According to a report issued last week by the Corporate Europe Observatory, a non-profit research organization focused on issues of economic inequality, climate change, and social justice, rights owners’ fears are well-founded. The report argues that Big Tech companies enjoyed “structural advantages” in what was supposed to be a broad-based and open process of drafting and revising the Code.
Tech companies had “privileged access” to the committee of experts charged with devising the Code, the report claims, including being invited to private workshops with the chairs of the committee’s various working groups. Access by other groups, in contrast, was far more limited, the report claims, including being given no access to the workshops and denied written minutes of the proceedings.
Notably, the report claims, nearly half of the companies invited to the workshop — 15 of the roughly three dozen — were U.S. tech companies, including Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Amazon.
Whether by design or coincidence, the U.S. Mission to the EU also wrote directly to the EU Commission pushing back strongly against early versions of the Code, the Commission acknowledged last month. The Trump White House has sharply criticized the EU since taking office, over what it sees as unfair regulatory treatment of U.S. companies, particularly U.S. tech companies.
Across the English Channel, meanwhile, the U.K. government is forging ahead on a bill that would permit AI companies to use copyrighted works without permission to train their models, unless rights owners affirmatively opt out. The provision is similar to one in the EU AI Act and the government of Prime Minister Kier Starmer has called the measure “essential” to maintaining Great Britain’s technological competitiveness with the rest of Europe.
The bill is set for a final vote in the House of Commons on May 7th but has attracted fierce opposition from some members of Parliament, including from Starmer’s own Labour Party, as well as creative industry luminaries such as Sir Paul McCartney and Elton John.
No. 10 has attempted, some would say half-heartedly, to mollify critics of the bill by promising to carry out an economic impact assessment of the bill and to publish reports on data transparency and licensing. But critics have called those commitments inadequate.
There is already “tons of evidence” that the government’s proposal would be “terrible for creators,” composer and former Stability AI executive Ed Newton-Rex told the Guardian. “We don’t need an economic impact assessment to tell us that.”
As with the Code of Practice, critics of the U.K. bill chaff at what they see as undue deference on the part of the government to the U.S. and U.S. technology companies.
“The question I would ask government is: why it is not protecting UK property rights,” Beeban Lady Kidron said. “Why it is not recognizing the growth potential of UK creative and innovative business, and why it has not heeded UK AI companies who say the government is privileging US and Chinese-based companies at the expense of our own?”
Kidron, a cross-bench Peer and campaigner, had previously gotten amendments added to the bill requiring AI companies to comply with existing U.K. copyright law, only to see them stripped from the bill in the Commons at the behest of No. 10. Liberal Democrat MPs, however, have vowed to reintroduce the amendments ahead of the final vote on Wednesday.
“An economic impact assessment should be the bare minimum creatives can expect,” Lib Dem spokesperson Victoria Collins said. “We’ll be pushing to stop AI copyright law from being watered down in the Commons next week, and urge MPs to stand with us and back British creators.”
But the success of that push is not assured. As it did with the Code of Practice, the Trump administration has pressured the U.K. government to lay off U.S. companies, including Big Tech companies.
It’s always hard to know with Trump how much of anything he does is actual policy, how much is grievance, or how much is simply his innate boorishness and petulance. Seeking any sort of lasting reciprocal alliance with him is a sucker's game because, to Trump, the very idea of personal reciprocity is a sucker’s game. It’s not how he rolls.
But Silicon Valley’s move-fast-and-break-things ethic vibrates sympathetically with Trump’s own heedless impulses. And Big Tech is able to shovel cash and favors his way at a level the creative industries cannot ever match. So far, that cash and those favors haven’t bought the tech companies much relief on the home front. But Big Tech’s agenda in Europe happens to overlap for now with Trump’s America-first chauvinism and his general contempt for the Old Continent and its technocratic ways. And tech companies’ eagerness to throw their weight around mirror’s his.
It’s a lot of weight on one side of the scale.