US targets Spotify in ‘competitive trade’ warning

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The Office of the United States Trade Representative has issued a warning to European companies that they may be individually targeted in America’s next round of trade actions.

In a post on X, the US Trade Representative office said:

The European Union and certain EU Member States have persisted in a continuing course of discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines, and directives against U.S. service providers.
U.S. services companies provide substantial free services to EU citizens and reliable enterprise services to EU companies, and they support millions of jobs and more than $100 billion in direct investment in Europe.
The United States has raised concerns with the EU for years on these matters without meaningful engagement or basic acknowledgement of U.S. concerns.
In stark contrast, EU service providers have been able to operate freely in the United States for decades, benefitting from access to our market and consumers on a level playing field.

Some of the largest EU service providers that the trade office says have “enjoyed expansive market access: include: Consulting company Accenture, travel booking service provider Amadeus, freight company DHL, communications group Publicis, technology company Siemens and Spotify.

Spotify is a Swedish based audio streaming service, co-founded by Daniel Ek in 2006, offering rented music, podcasts, and audiobooks via a freemium model with over 700 million users. Listed on the New York Stock Exchange as SPOT, the company’s share price has falled since the trade statement.

If the EU and EU Member States “insist on continuing to restrict, limit, and deter the competitiveness of U.S. service providers through discriminatory means,” the US trade office has thretened to use “every tool at its disposal to counter these unreasonable measures. Should responsive measures be necessary, U.S. law permits the assessment of fees or restrictions on foreign services, among other actions.”

The trade office says the US “will take a similar approach to other countries that pursue an EU-style strategy in this area.”

Trade Ambassador Greer’s speech to the 2025 Conservative Conference indicates the philosophy behind the latest activities that attempt top fight back against EU restrictions on American companies operating in the EU zone.

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