President Donald Trump has criticised the EU for bringing antitrust action against large American technology companies, saying such lawsuits should be instigated instead by the US.
Mr Trump, speaking to Fox Business on Wednesday, hit out at Margarethe Vestager, the EU competition commissioner, and hinted that he could back action against some of the country’s largest technology companies.
“She hates the United States perhaps worse than any person I’ve ever met,” said Mr Trump. “What she does to our country. She’s suing all our companies. We should be suing Google and Facebook, and all that.”
He added: “They’re suing Apple. They’re suing everybody.”
Mr Trump also suggested the US should sue Twitter, which he has accused of unfairly limiting his follower numbers. “Twitter is just terrible, what they do. They don’t let you get the word out. I’ll tell you what, they should be sued because of what’s happening with the bias,” the president said.
He added: “These people are all Democrats, it’s totally biased toward Democrats. If I announced tomorrow that I’m going to become a nice liberal Democrat, I would pick up five times more followers.”
Major tech companies trimmed gains in premarket trade on Wednesday, leaving Facebook up 0.3 per cent, Twitter up 0.4 per cent and Alphabet down fractionally.
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