How Hatred of the EU Could Rekindle the Musk-Trump Bromance

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have found a common enemy. They both might need it to be a friend. (Getty Images)

President Donald Trump and his on-again/off-again wingman Elon Musk haven’t found a great deal of common ground since their falling out over tax policy last spring, but the pair may have found a shared enemy to unite their billionaire bromance.

Both have had a long and tempestuous relationship with the European Union, with the president accusing the bloc as existing for the “sole purpose of ripping off the United States” and the Tesla CEO accusing it of suppressing free speech and democracy for some nefarious, yet unarticulated, ambition.

Their enmity was back on full display this weekend, as well, following a decision by the European Commission to fine Musk’s X social-media platform $140 million for violating portions of its new Digital Services Act.

Musk, not one known to be fond of regulation of any kind, responded to having to pay a fine equivalent to 0.57% of his companies’ global revenue by calling the European project a “bureaucratic monster” unfit for democracy.

“The EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries, so that governments can better represent their people,” Musk wrote on the X platform he tried not to purchase for $44 billion in 2022.

Various officials in the Trump administration joined the chorus, with U.S. Ambassador to the EU, Andrew Puzder vowing to “challenge burdensome regulations that target U.S. companies abroad” while “opposing censorship.”

The latter was a bit of a non sequitur, however, given that the EU fine was tied to allegations of deceptive business practices, transparency issues, and a failure to provide public data to researchers.

But it does indicate the level of intensity that has defined relations between Washington and Brussels since the new Trump administration resumed office in January.

The U.S. and the EU have sparred over trade deals, environmental protections, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and Washington’s role in the simmering conflict between Israel and Hamas.

The EU’s decadeslong effort to bring U.S. tech companies to heel hasn’t gone unnoticed, either, and was in focus again last week when the European Commission opened a formal antitrust probe into Meta Platforms’ use of artificial intelligence in WhatsApp.

Musk’s petulance doesn’t demand a great deal of investigation. Accusing the EU of being anti-democratic suggests a profound misunderstanding of the bloc’s construction, which member states have joined voluntarily and have the right to depart.

The EU’s unofficial role as global tech regulator, however, is a bit more complicated.

Its powerful Commission has levied more than $33 billion in fines against U.S. tech giants over the past decade and brought meaningful change to the industry in the form of data protection, content and advertising regulation.

The Trump administration, however, has characterized the EU’s efforts as both a barrier to free trade and a tacit form of support to China’s tech industry. He’s also vowed to impose “substantial additional tariffs” on countries that attempt to “discriminate against American Technology [sic].”

However, the president may soon find himself aligned to the EU’s way of thinking on a key development in the media industry.

Trump told reporters over the weekend that Netflix’s proposed $72 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery will be subject to a Justice Department review that “could be a problem.”

It isn’t difficult to see how the tie-up, which would combine the biggest and third largest media streaming groups in the world, would capture the interest of regulators in Brussels as well.

Paramount Skydance Corp ., which lost the takeover battle, has solid ties to the president and would be waiting in the wings if the Netflix deal fell through. If it failed because of EU demands, all the better for the president, who would escape accusations of meddling in the fate of Warner Bros.’s CNN.

Musk, meanwhile, faces a longer series of conflicts with EU regulators as develops xAI, which was purchased by X earlier this year in a deal valued at around $33 billion.

The group is a central and critical plank to Musk’s AI-related ambitions for both Optimus, his robotics division, and Grok, his AI-powered Chatbot.

In other words, both Musk and Trump may soon need support from the very EU regulators they now find so contemptuous.

Whether the two will be friends by then is a different story.

Write to Martin Baccardax at martin.baccardax@barrons.com