American tech companies built the digital economy, and they are its leading producers—the United States accounts for more than one-third of global output in the IT and information services industry. But America better watch out, as Kristin Wooster writes in RealClearWorld, because the European Union is making a concerted effort to rewrite the rules of the game through regulatory policy. If the EU succeeds, it will undercut America’s technological leadership at the expense of its economic power and national security writ large.
To understand what is happening, consider a meeting that occurred in Kenya in October 2023. The EU’s commissioner for international partnerships flew to Nairobi to sign a deal bundling grants and loans for broadband infrastructure and digital skills programs, with technical assistance to help Kenya design its digital regulatory framework. The package was part of the EU’s Global Gateway strategy, a 300 billion euro initiative that pairs infrastructure investment with regulatory alignment in developing countries. No American official was in the room offering an alternative.
What Kenya got in that deal was not just a sizable foreign direct investment. It was also Europe’s regulatory blueprint for digital markets. The EU’s model is built around laws like the Digital Markets Act, which designates the largest technology platforms as “gatekeepers” and subjects them to special restrictions and fines—carefully designed to target a small handful of leading tech firms, almost all American.
Read the op-ed in RealClearWorld.
