Trump administration labels Australia’s media bargaining laws ‘foreign extortion’ | Australian media
The Trump administration has described Australia’s moves to make big tech companies pay for online news as “extortion” but Anthony Albanese defended the plan, saying it was about protecting and rewarding media organizations for the work they produce.
Labor’s plan to encourage Meta, Google and TikTok to strike deals with Australian news publishers or face a 2.25% tax is likely to be supported by the Coalition and Greens in parliament. But a bigger problem may be the anger of Donald Trump, who has been staunchly opposed to extra regulation of US-based tech companies. A major tech industry lobby group on Wednesday urged the White House to consider retaliatory trade measures.
Australian Financial Review He quoted Trump administration spokesman Kush Desai as saying that the US government would look into the details.
“President Trump is committed to protecting America’s leading technology sector from digital services taxes and other forms of foreign extortion,” he said. “The Trump administration will continue to resolve these issues with our trading partners.”
Guardian Australia has contacted the White House for comment.
The US-based Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group for the technology industry that represents Meta and Google, as well as other major firms such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Uber and Pinterest, also criticized Australia’s proposal, calling it “discriminatory”.
The CCIA issued a strong statement attacking what it called “arbitrary definitions of service.”
“This would effectively function as a coercive tax on linking and viewing of local news content, which is, in business parlance, illegal. performance requirement” he said.
“The Computer and Communications Industry Association strongly opposes this proposal and calls on the U.S. government to publicly and strongly object to the draft measure, including targeted trade solutions, if the legislation passes. The stimulus is discriminatory in both design and impact, favoring predominantly U.S. firms while disrupting digital markets and undermining open internet principles.”
Google and Meta also strongly criticized the government’s change. Google has rejected the need for reform and harshly criticized Labor’s failure to include AI platforms, while Meta, who runs Facebook and Instagram, said the government’s stance was “completely wrong”.
Asked about the White House’s comments on Wednesday, Albanese said the plan was necessary.
“I think whether you’re from Bloomberg, whether you’re from Fin, whether you’re from the West, whether you’re from Seven, your intellectual property, your work, should be valued, and someone shouldn’t be able to take your work and profit from it without paying,” he said. “This is intellectual property, this is creativity, this is hard work.
“This is a property that you have produced. I value your work. I respect the work that journalists do.”
Albanese emphasized that the Australian government will not have “any revenue gain” and noted that the government wants companies to make agreements and not have to pay any taxes.
The Coalition’s shadow communications spokeswoman Sarah Henderson stopped short of backing the changes on Tuesday, while National Party leader Matt Canavan voiced support for big tech companies paying for news on Wednesday, raising the prospect of the plan passing parliament with Coalition support.
“I would like to see the government implement this because I firmly believe that these big overseas big tech companies should be contributing to the news services of all Australians,” he told Channel Nine.
“Given that these companies consume and monetize much of this news, they need to contribute to these news services.”
Greens communications spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said she wanted to see more details, including how deals would be made and how the funding would be distributed, raising concerns that smaller or regional broadcasters would be left behind. But the Greens are expected to give more support to news organisations.
“Who will ensure that this goes to quality, public interest journalism?” Hanson-Young asked. “This shouldn’t just go to the shareholders, the big media companies and their shareholders, it should go to the creation of journalism.”
