Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle urge Biden to intervene in Europe's perceived unfair treatment of American technology firms.

• A group of bipartisan lawmakers is calling on President Biden to persuade European leaders to modify the language in their Digital Markets Act to avoid unfairly targeting U.S. tech companies.
• The DMA would unfairly discriminate against U.S. tech companies while excluding large firms from China and other countries, they contend.
• The issue of competition reform has been approached with caution by the White House, as they navigate a delicate balance between domestic and international considerations.

Thirty bipartisan lawmakers are calling on President Biden to persuade European leaders to modify the language in their Digital Markets Act to avoid unfairly targeting U.S. tech companies.

In a letter sent Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Reps. Suzan DelBene and Darin LaHood, expressed their concern that the EU's proposed approach to promoting competition among digital platforms unfairly targets American workers by labeling certain U.S. technology companies as "gatekeepers" based on discriminatory and subjective criteria.

As lawmakers discuss competition reforms at home, two bills have passed the Senate Judiciary Committee this year with bipartisan support, aiming to limit the influence of Big Tech companies.

The White House has attempted to balance competition reform at home and abroad by expressing support for the bipartisan efforts in Congress while expressing concerns about certain aspects of the EU's plans.

The European Commission announced the Digital Markets Act in 2020 to address online competition issues, such as tech companies favoring their own products over others on their platforms, which regulators worldwide, including in the U.S., have struggled with.

The lawmakers who penned the letter on Wednesday expressed a desire to do more to safeguard consumers and their privacy, but contended that American tech companies are unfairly targeted in the DMA. They cited a Financial Times article from last year in which an EU lawmaker stated that American tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple were the "biggest problems" for competition policy in Europe.

The lawmakers called the DMA’s parameters “de facto discrimination.”

European leaders have stated that the DMA, as currently proposed, is not aimed at regulating market share but rather at limiting American companies' presence in Europe to support European businesses.

The lawmakers pointed out that Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent, being large Chinese firms, would not be subject to the DMA due to their competitive advantage and access to a protected market of over 1.3 billion consumers in China.

The EU agrees that we should develop joint strategies to combat China's digital authoritarianism, surveillance regime, and human and worker rights violations. As a result, it should refrain from supporting companies that contribute to the expansion of these harmful practices.

Neither the European Commission nor the White House provided an immediate response to requests for comment from their representatives.