The US elections are upon us, and the Brussels bubble was buzzing yesterday.
The race is by all accounts set to be a very close one. At this point, it's anyone's guess who the winner will be.
It's important to note that as historic as this US election is, many of the tectonic shifts underlying the transatlantic relationship are already in motion. As US officials told Brussels ahead of the US-EU Trade and Technology Council in April, we are now living in a multipolar world. Both the US and EU are already focusing more on how they can protect their own industries.
Here's what either result could mean for EU tech policy.
Democrat win
Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is expected to maintain a similar line to Biden, who tried to reign in Big Tech particularly with antitrust actions. But she may be slightly friendlier to Silicon Valley. A California native, she has been "nurtured" as a politician by "power players in the tech hothouse," wrote the Washington Post.
LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, one of her biggest supporters, has called for the removal of Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission Chair who has been the poster child of the campaign against Big Tech monopolies. "Antitrust is fine. [...] waging war is not,” he told CNN about Khan.
EU regulators will of course continue to enforce EU rules, but they may have a harder time if the US is no longer on the same wavelength.
Politics aside, any continuation of Biden's strategy on tech will face a new challenge. The Supreme Court ruled against the Chevron deference in June, under which federal judges would defer to agencies' opinions to interpret the law, as long as the agency's opinion is "reasonable" and Congress hasn't itself opined on the matter. The decision limits agencies' role in interpreting federal law significantly. These institutions have been key to Biden's game plan for Big Tech.
The existing challenge of a divided Congress, which hasn't been able to pass any landmark rules on tech, will also likely remain.
Harris has said she is committed to US alliances with other countries, which bodes well for cooperation with the EU on tech matters, should she win.
Republican win
The Republican nominee, Donald Trump certainly hasn't shown any commitment to multilateralism. He has expressed he is not happy with how little US goods Europe is buying. This will likely strain the transatlantic relationship.
He has infamously cozied up to Elon Musk, who has historically been a tough critic of EU, and, well, most regulations. Musk may even be getting a seat in Trump’s cabinet, which would surely make things interesting as the Commission investigates X, which Musk privately owns.
Trump himself is sympathetic to deregulation broadly speaking, and this stance is popular among Big Tech firms, in antithesis to the EU regulatory machine. A deregulation tide in the US could embolden existing similar calls in Europe.
Trump and Musk are also known to spread misinformation. Musk is a self-proclaimed proponent of free speech and opposes content moderation, especially when it is done by governments, which they see as censorship. This ideology has spread across Silicon Valley and in Brussels.
This has put the Musk and Trump duo on a collision course with EU regulators who are trying to enforce the Digital Services Act.
Trump's quest to "Make America Great Again" may mean tariffs for EU goods, and could supercharge measures benefiting US companies, to the detriment of European companies.
Despite her stated commitment to multilateralism, Harris does also intend to boost US industries, as did Biden with the Inflation Reduction Act.
