Time for US Spread Sovereignty

For years, European regulators have waged a righteous war against American tech giants, demanding that Silicon Valley respect European sovereignty, protect European consumers, pay for the EU’s budget, and stop being so darned useful to European consumers. The DMA (Digital Markets Act). The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). The DSTs (digital services taxes). The billions in fines against Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft. It never ends.

The message from Brussels has been clear: Large U.S. tech companies have no right to give European consumers and businesses what they want. Only less innovative EU companies can do that.

You know what? We Americans agree with this principle completely. Which is why we are insisting on the immediate investigation and regulation of what we call “Big Spread,” including the potential breakup of Nutella.

It’s time for spread sovereignty.

As former FTC Chair Theory Britannia recently wrote: “As individuals, we spend four to five hours a day engaging with the delights of hazelnut-chocolate spread, from bread and pastries to eating it straight out of the jar late at night. It is essential, therefore, that we have control over how the spread space is organized, structured, and regulated.”

Hear, hear! I mean, consider the facts. Ferrero, an Italian corporation that started in the small town of Alba, Piedmont, with nothing but a big dream—and now operates as a global powerhouse headquartered in Luxembourg—has achieved a stranglehold over the American breakfast table that would make Mark Zuckerberg blush.

There is no meaningful domestic competitor. American children have been algorithmically—or rather, hazelnutically—nudged into Nutella dependency from an early age. Parents report feeling unable to switch from that mouthwatering spread. Indeed, the switching costs are enormous.

Try telling a nine-year-old to use organic American almond butter. You cannot.

And let’s be clear: this is “Big Spread.” Ferrero has roughly quadrupled its sales since 2018, when it already held a dominant position in the expanding U.S. spread market.

Where is the American Nutella? It does not exist. Ferrero has used its dominant market position, its network effects (once Nutella enters a household, it spreads—literally), and its addictive interface design (that distinctive jar, seamlessly optimized for hands of all sizes) to crush any domestic alternative before it could scale. And where it could not, it bought competitors up through classic “killer acquisitions.”

This is precisely the behavior Brussels claims to find intolerable when Americans do it.

Google offers other search engines. Apple allows third-party browsers. But Nutella? Name one open-jar competitor with equivalent market penetration. Once again, you cannot. The hazelnut-chocolate spread market is a de facto monopoly, and Washington has done nothing about it.

The national security implications alone should trigger a CFIUS review. Ferrero controls the morning mood of millions of Americans, ages five to ninety-five. And he who controls breakfast controls the workforce pipeline. Europe knows this! That’s why they kept the good stuff and exported the rest here.

We are not against trade. We are not against hazelnut-chocolate deliciousness. We are simply asking for the same standard to be applied in both directions.

If European regulators can demand that American companies interoperate, open their platforms, and face structural remedies for dominance, surely American regulators can demand that Nutella jars carry a label reading: “This product was produced by a foreign monopolist with zero domestic alternatives. The FTC is aware.”

But the FTC needs to do more than be aware. We need a “Spread Services Tax,” under which large foreign spread companies would pay 5 percent of their U.S. revenues to the federal government.

Congress needs to pass a Hazelnut Products Agreement (HPA) that designates sellers with annual sales above $2 billion as “gatekeepers.” With that designation would come obligations, meaning they could no longer discriminate against America’s mom-and-pop spread businesses. This would require mandatory disclosure of their recipe and customer list to any American hazelnut-chocolate spread provider. And if they are found in violation, the FTC would have the authority to fine them up to 5 percent of their global revenues.

In addition, legislation should charge the FTC with bringing cases against any spread firm that has acquired American companies in the past decade with the intent of rescinding those mergers. Do Americans want long-admired companies like Keebler and Butterfinger to be owned by foreign corporations? What, the Keebler elf now speaks with an Italian accent? Not on our watch.

And of course, Ferrero and the other European monopolists want us to abandon our hard-fought regulatory protections for American consumers. That is why we need to make it illegal for foreign spread companies to scrape publicly available images of Americans enjoying Nutella, because, as we all know, those images will be used in breakfast recognition databases that identify us.

Like Theory Britannia said, “America’s vast spread market is open to all. But those who want to benefit from it must abide by our conditions. If our trading partners have no respect for the rules, then they have no access to the market.”

To be sure, Ferrero invests heavily in the United States, spending more than $5 billion over the past five years on North American manufacturing and logistics to support its growth. Since 2020, it has invested in a new innovation center and R&D labs in Chicago, expanded its manufacturing plant in Illinois, built three new distribution centers across the United States, and expanded its corporate headquarters in New Jersey.

But none of that changes the fundamental problem: Ferrero is not American-owned. We need spread sovereignty.

With no global Big Spread leaders of our own, the United States must now combine ambitious regulation with massive infrastructure investment, sovereign innovation, and talent development.

Critics say this effort would waste billions by replicating existing products and technologies, tie up our best engineers, and deliver no real strategic impact. Some even argue that the United States’ resources would be better spent on R&D in critical sectors where it could scale and eventually lead.

I say those critics aren’t thinking very critically. Spread sovereignty will allow us to regain control over our infrastructure, reduce dependence on foreign actors, and protect our fundamental rights. We must resist external pressure and assert the strength of our sovereign industry.

Until then, Europe will continue spreading—across our toast, across our children’s lunches, and, apparently, across our digital regulatory vocabulary too—its dominance in the United States and around the world.

(The author of this article accepts no funding from Jif, Skippy, or any hazelnut-chocolate lobby. Yet.)