Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Meta, reportedly met with U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss the threat of digital market taxes against U.S. companies.
Following this meeting Trump proceeded to threaten tariffs on nations which do not remove such legislation against American companies.
Bloomberg reported on 28 August that Zuckerberg met with Trump in recent weeks to talk about the threat of countries attacking US players by instituting digital rules and taxes against them.
The news agency reported the majority of Meta Platforms’ revenue comes from advertising on social media platforms Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.
Digital market rules are designed to tax technology companies’ revenue on a per country basis.
On Tuesday 26 August, Trump vowed to “impose substantial additional Tariffs on that Country’s Exports to the USA” in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Without naming the countries he deemed guilty of discriminating against US companies, he also threatened to put export restrictions on “highly protected” technology and chips to those nations.
A number of countries have digital service and market regulations in place including those in the European Union and the UK.
“Mark Zuckerberg visited the White House last week to discuss Meta’s domestic infrastructure investments and advancing American tech leadership abroad”, a Meta representative told Mobile World Live.
In January, Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos-owned Amazon each donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.
Source: Mobile World Live
Image Credit: Mark Zuckerberg
