The geopolitical role of information technology and the unavoidable dependence on US technology make the option of 15% tariffs on Big Tech, in reaction to Trump’s aggressiveness towards the EU and Italy, simply impracticable by Andrea Monti – Initially published in Italian by Italian Tech – La Repubblica
Let’s look at the facts.
Aside from the obvious reference to IBM, Big Tech is everywhere.
Microsoft has a widespread, deep and entrenched presence in government, central administration as well as in the business and professional worlds starting with the operating system and ending with platforms such as Office365 and Azure data-centres; and even the European Commission has “suddenly” realized that it is overly dependent on this vendor.
Google is not to be outdone with its own cloud products and services, and its own e-mail and DNS management infrastructure, while Adobe reigns supreme in document management and content generation tools.
Oracle is an established presence in the database sector, and let’s not mention Amazon’s gradual entrenchment in the logistics sector. Still talking about e-commerce, we cannot forget E-bay and Paypal, and staying in the sphere of platforms, the name Meta is self-explanatory
Among the manufacturers of “smart objects,” Apple is a more than established presence in the smartphone sector, and then there are all those companies that are less known to the general public but have important positions and roles, such as, for example, Crowdstrike, the U.S. multinational cybersecurity company whose error in the release of a software update paralyzed, in July 2024, many Italian infrastructures
NetApp is another company that is unknown to most but has an important position in the field of storing huge volumes of data.
The list could go on and on, but at this point the concept is clear.
How widespread is the technological dependence on the U.S.
To understand what this means concretely, let’s take one of the Italian case studies presented by NetApp itself, that of Italgas, i.e., the largest Italian company in the distribution of gas, a raw material that has become essential for businesses and (the pockets of) citizens.
Italgas, the document recounting the project says, uses Oracle databases, on Microsoft Azure infrastructure, and NetApp data management products
Let’s now try to imagine that these companies, overnight, revoke the licenses to use the software used to operate this complex system and terminate their contracts with Italgas (as, for example, the Israeli company that provides wiretapping tools to Italy’s intelligence and judicial authorities would have done). The short-term consequences are very easy to imagine.
Is history destined to repeat itself?
Fantapolitics? Conspiracy? Groundless hypothesis?
Not so much, considering that back in 2017 the then (and current) US President, Donald Trump, issued an executive order that disabled (albeit temporarily) all copies of Adobe software in Venezuela as part of a broader sanctions package, and that in 2019, also during the Trump presidency, Huawei was barred from integrating Google services into its mobile devices.
Merit aside, then, there is little question that Big Tech is also part of the U.S. geopolitical arsenal and that, like any weapon, it is used according to strategic need. Primo Levi wrote, that when something happened once it can happen again. So, who can rule out the possibility that the U.S. will not resort to measures similar to those already issued, but this time targeted toward the EU, if only to strike at the hypernormativized regime and sanctions that plague Big Tech -and ultimately technological control over the EU?
The reciprocity risk triggered by sanctions
So far, despite the unnecessary bureaucratic fetters imposed by the anti-US data protection regulation, the costly ineffective rules on cell phone chargers , the unrealistic AI regulation, and the multimillion-dollar penalties imposed on the Big Tech of the day -a balk that covers up the unwillingness to solve the underlying problems- no one in the US has yet decided to hit the “kill switch.” But it is also true that precisely because of its attitude the EU is cut off from the availability of some leading products and particularly those that make use of or serve to build artificial intelligence.
On the other hand, the facts show that today’s incumbent U.S. administration has chosen a strategy that resembles the Blitzkrieg and that favors the direct use of force over more surgical but less effective short-term coercion mechanisms. Whatever the reasons for and effectiveness of this choice, the tactical effect is that of a constantly changing scenario that prevents adversaries from having time to organize countermeasures.
The problem of time and vision
Indeed, like the case of ReArm Europe, that of first gaining European technological independence and then sovereignty cannot be addressed simply by raining money from the sky-or taking it out of other items in states’ budgets.
It may seem counterintuitive in an era when everything, including solutions to problems, must have the speed of a tweet, but change needs time, lots of time. So it is simply impossible that, in the face of a possible decommissioning or restriction of the use of U.S. technology products, we can think of solving the problem by announcing yet another hundreds of billions of euros European plan (finding them would be another matter) and shelving the dossier.
The impracticality in the short term of the open source alternative
To convince yourself of this, just do a small exercise by taking the situation to extremes.
If one excludes wanting to fall out of the frying pan into the fire, and thus abandoning U.S. technologies in favor of Chinese ones, the other option is to migrate to open source or free software and platforms since much of what would be needed is already there and what is missing could be made to happen with a massive investment plan for Italian or European software development.
Aside from the non-trivial issue that programs need computers to work and that computers are not made by Italy or the EU, years would pass between development time, integration and “laying down,” during which time the foreign technology masters would certainly not sit idly by while the European market spins out of their control.
It is true, as the case of energy shows today, that it is possible to think of strategies to manage a migration to other sources of supply without disrupting current trade relations. But the very case of energy demonstrates how such a shift requires time and investment in any case, as well as the creation of new dependency relationships that may be no less problematic than those that have been disrupted.
Duties or sanctions?
Strictly speaking, duties are not sanctions and therefore it would not be correct to use the two terms indifferently. However, mindful of the Bard’s immortal words, it is a fact that a rose called something else is no less fragrant.
It matters little, then, that formally a duty is a “simple” domestic market protection measure because if it is used offensively it becomes, for all intents and purposes, an undisclosed sanction. On the other hand, even the EU’s bombastic threats about “retaliation” to “illegal tariffs” imposed by the U.S. suggest that the situation is far more serious than a “normal” trade dispute handled with the tools provided by the World Trade Organization.
It would be simplistic to paint a black-and-white picture of the current U.S.-EU relationship because the reality of diplomacy is made up of infinite nuances and imperceptible but substantial transitions from one to the other; but for that very reason, then, it would be useful to avoid radicalizing the opposition, moreover, with measures that have the potential to backfire like a boomerang.
Who pays (for) the penalties?
Even if one were to disregard all the systemic considerations made so far, in fact, there is one that writes the final word on the idea of tariffs for BigTech: imposing economic burdens on Big Tech’s products and services only means increasing the price paid by citizens, businesses, and institutions for those products and services since they cannot help but use them.
The logic of the duty is, in fact, to discourage the purchase of foreign product in favour of domestic product or product from friendly countries. In the case of Big Tech, however, and also because of the time required for the technological transition, the immediate effect of duties is only to make more expensive what must be used perforce, since in the short run there is no alternative.
If imposed, then, the Big Tech duty would unleash a perfect storm: it would not harm American companies, making them richer, but it would harm Italy, making it poorer and complicating the transition process toward technological independence and autonomy.