By Stephen Moore
Envy is an ugly thing — one of the seven deadly sins.
The Europeans have long been dripping with jealousy that American firms dominate the tech sector — cell phones, search engines, social media platforms, AI and robotics.
As a consequence, the U.S. economy as measured by net worth is now 50 percent larger than Europe’s and even the residents of our poorest states like West Virginia have a higher income than the average European. (RELATED: J.D. FOSTER: Trump Is Right About The Debt Limit — Kill It)
One reason: The United States innovates while Europe regulates. Instead of fixing their economies in Euroland, the EU bureaucrats want to kneecap America’s tech success stories with fines and lawsuits and regulatory barbed wire fences to keep American firms from competing on a level playing field.
A case in point is the rash of expensive antitrust lawsuits against Google search engines.
Even worse is that a few years ago the European Union enacted “the Digital Markets Act” under the guise of trying to “ensure contestable and fair markets in the digital sector.”
Whenever government officials talk about promoting “fairness,” it means they are looking for expanding their own power.
Under this Act, Europe’s regulators are seeking to rein in successful technology companies like Apple through a new regulatory principle called “interoperability.”
Interoperability calls for third-party developers throughout the world to be given access to Apple’s private operating systems — iOS and iPadOS. In this framework, Apple is treated like a public utility with features that can be leveraged by other companies.
This is a sore-loser concept. Apple is a highly dynamic company that has achieved its market-leading status by developing wildly popular trailblazing products.
The European regulations, could require iPhones to offer competitor products. This makes as much sense as requiring McDonalds to offer Burger King fries with their “happy meals.”
The iPhone amenities and apps are part of a package deal that have made these devices the most popular in the world with billions of customers. This hardly sounds like monopolistic behavior. For people who don’t like Apple’s aps, there are many other cell phone products, such as Galaxy that consumers can turn to made by T-Mobile, Google, or a handful made in China.
For all the talk about Apple’s monopoly, they now control slightly less than 20% of the global cell-phone market.
Yet Europe’s bureaucrats have declared that Apple cannot charge product developers who are given access to the company’s operating systems. It is like getting to ride the train for free.
Interoperability is a dangerous concept — especially when it comes to security and privacy. Apple places a premium on maintaining the integrity of its devices and protecting its users’ data. But there is no guarantee that third parties given unfettered access to the Apple platform will have the same high standards.
That is going to leave Europe’s users of Apple products at greater risk of getting hacked. The results could be “disastrous,” points out Dirk Auer of the International Center for Law and Economics. “Users’ identity could be leaked, their money stolen, and their data could be compromised.”
Social media companies that want access to Apple’s operating systems could also gain access to I-phone users’ data and information. Apple warns that outsiders could “read on a user’s device all of their messages and emails, see every phone call they make or receive, track every app that they use, scan all of their photos, look at their files and calendar events, log all of their passwords, and more.”
Even Apple doesn’t access this data in order to protect the privacy of their users.
The danger here is that if companies that spend billions of dollars innovating to build a better mousetrap can’t own and control their own products and reap the financial rewards, innovation will be stifled — in which case everyone loses. Sharing patented information with competitors in the name of “fairness” is a socialist idea that has rusted the Eurozone economy.
If Europe wants to get back in the tech game, EU bureaucrats should focus on what made these companies so successful in the first place — and then try to create a public policy environment that will foster innovative companies that can compete and win — rather than run to the courts for protection. Punishing the winners is a good way to keep producing losers.
In the meantime, let’s hope the incoming Trump regulators at the FTC and FCC and the Justice Department defend American companies against aggressive and hostile lawsuits to hobble our made-in-American companies. In other words, put America first and don’t let Europe take a bite out of our Apple.
Stephen Moore is a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity and a co-author of the new book: “The Trump Economic Miracle.”
