Stop fining Big Tech, says U.S. ambassador to EU Andrew Puzder

The European Union needs to dial back regulation of U.S. big tech companies if it wants to be part of the AI economy, the U.S. ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder told CNBC on Friday.

“If the European Union is going to participate in the AI economy…They’re going to need data centers, data and access to the United States AI hardware stack, and you can’t over regulate and move the goal post on regulations and hit companies with huge fines,” Puzder told Ian King on CNBC’s “Europe Early Edition.”

The European Commission has taken a slew of actions to crack down on U.S. tech companies in the past year. Those moves have drawn repeated criticism from a number of officials in President Donald Trump’s administration.

“You know the very companies that can bring you the data, the data centers and the American AI hardware stack,” he added. “If you regulate them off the continent, you’re not going to be a part of the AI economy.”

“So I think it’s important for Europe to take a very careful look at what it’s doing with respect to those companies. And I think it’s important for those companies to look at the prospects of continuing to do significant business in the EU.”

The EU has defended its regulation of U.S. tech companies, with the bloc’s competition chief Teresa Ribera commenting that “all companies operating in the EU must follow our laws and respect European values,” in a statement in 2025.

Meta was warned in February that the EU intends to impose measures on the tech giant to reverse its WhatsApp AI policy, following a 200-million-euro ($230 million) fine in April. That same month Apple was fined 500 million euros and in September Google was hit with a 2.95-billion-euro fine.

In December Elon Musk’s social media app X was fined 120 million euros. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the fine an “attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments,” in a post on X at the time.

On Thursday, the Commission announced it had opened formal proceedings to investigate whether social media platform Snapchat, owned by Snap, is in compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA) over child safety online.