The European Union and the United States took one ultra-laborious step forward in ratifying their bilateral trade deal in late June. Now, the trading partners may be taking several steps back from the hard-fought truce, which took nearly a year to complete.
That’s due to an European Commission announcement on Thursday that American tech juggernaut Google will be fined 890 million euros (close to $1 billion) for allegedly violating the trade bloc’s Digital Markets Act.
Google stands accused of “self-preferencing” its own services on Google Search while restricting businesses that direct shoppers to “alternative, often cheaper, purchase channels” for buying everything from retail goods like fashion products to flights and hotels.
“Google displays its own services more prominently in search results, including at the top of the search results page or by using enhanced visuals and filters, while similar third-party services do not have the same prominence,” the Commission wrote.
The charges aren’t dissimilar to ones levied against Google in recent years by several U.S. state attorneys general and the Department of Justice. For example, last year, a federal judge rules that the company engaged in anticompetitive practices to establish an illegal monopoly over the ad tech stack. Multiple states have taken the company to court for anti-competitive sales practices across its search engine, app stores and ads.
But U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer said the Trump administration isn’t taking Europe’s slight against Google lying down, saying the fine represents “the latest in an increasingly aggressive approach targeting U.S. technology firms.”
The Commission has taken two other recent actions against Google which also resulted in financial penalties, and these “various fines” add up to over 2 percent of the trade bloc’s total budget, Greer said. Plus, the bloc’s Digital Services Tax has been a longstanding point of contention in trade negotiations, with Trump recently threatening to hit countries this impose such levies with new tariffs.
“The EU often claims that it is looking for stability and predictability in our trading relationship, but these actions are driving massive uncertainty for U.S. exports of goods and services to Europe,” he added.
The so-called Turnberry Agreement, which was brokered through a handshake deal between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and President Donald Trump on July 27, 2025, established a ceiling of 15 percent for U.S. tariffs on the majority of European imports. The pact finally passed the European Parliament in early June and was ratified by the European Council late last month.
But the Commission’s announcement regarding Google imperils the deal mere weeks after its completion. Greer said the U.S. government was attempting to resolve the issue with the EU, “[b]ut a real dialogue can only take place during a ceasefire.”
“The EU’s recent actions undermine these efforts and pose a real risk to the continuation of transatlantic stability with respect to trade,” he warned.
