US trade wars raise UK, EU fears child safety laws will become bargaining chips

Children’s online safety advocates are petitioning the UK to hold firm on its child protection legislation, amid concerns that the government will cave to U.S. pressure to weaken the laws as a concession in trade negotiations. 

The 5Rights Foundation has issued a release noting a letter sent to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, “imploring” him to “prioritize children’s online safety in any economic deal with the U.S. Administration.”

The non-profit says the letter “follows reports that the UK Government may seek to water down enforcement of the Online Safety Act (OSA) and the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act.” A report from the Guardian says that Washington has taken umbrage with Ofcom’s guidelines and their implications for large U.S. companies, and that a draft transatlantic trade agreement contains commitments to review enforcement of the OSA. 

5Rights’ letter, which is also signed by the parents of kids who have lost lives due to online harms, bullying and harassment, references the popular Netflix production Adolescence, a drama that deals with themes of misogyny and the radicalization of boys. The series, which tells the story of a 13-year-old boy who murders a female schoolmate, has raised awareness of the need to address the way young men access the internet, and what they take away from it.  

“While the story of Jamie, his family and his victim Katie is fictional, children’s increasing exposure to the glorification of violence and hatred – particularly against women and girls – online is not. The best protection we have against these dangers is an Online Safety Act enforced with Parliament’s full intent.” 

EU regulatory rulebook ‘should not be part of the horse-trading’

It is not just the UK that has concerns about what might be sacrificed in the U.S.’ global trade war. The EU is equally entangled in Donald Trump’s shell game of tariffs, even if play has been paused for 90 days. Europe has loaded up a retaliatory 25 percent tariff on American goods, worth a collective $23 billion, before the U.S. president reneged on his initial threat to slap tariffs on most every country in the world.

The EU is notably more compliance-focused than the U.S., and there has been speculation, as Silicon Valley tech giants cozy up to Trump, that Europe might use regulations such as the Digital Services Act (DSA), Digital Markets Act (DMA) and forthcoming AI Act as a way to counter Trump’s tariffs. 

A piece in Tech Policy Press notes that in recent weeks, “speculation rose that Brussels – bristling from deteriorating relations with its closest ally – would seek to target digital services from the likes of Meta, Alphabet and Amazon in its collective brinkmanship with Washington.” 

Meta and Apple and X are all under separate investigations by either the DSA and DMA. For noncompliance, European regulators have the authority to issue fines of up to 10 percent of a company’s yearly revenue. The AI Act, which comes into force in 2026, allows additional fines of up to 7 percent of their annual global turnover if they use the tech for prohibited practices such as social scores, or “mass harvesting people’s images for facial recognition purposes.” 

Tech Policy Press’s Mark Scott argues that weaponizing digital regulation “fundamentally misunderstands how such regulation works” and “fails to grasp what the EU is trying to achieve with its comprehensive renewal of how the online world is protected from harm and abuse.” 

“When it comes to enforcement, it is true the DSA and DMA have over-indexed on American tech firms,” he writes. “Yet that is almost exclusively because the likes of Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta remain the largest technology companies in the world, and therefore are more likely to skew online markets or house substantial amounts of illegal material and goods compared to smaller EU competitors.” 

“In truth, the collective DSA, DMA, and AI Act are inherently more focused on internal EU issues than they are on the bloc’s external relations with the world. None of these policy levers, inherently, are designed to be used as a blunt weapon in a global dispute between Europe and its closest trading partner.” 

Article Topics

age verification  |  digital identity  |  Digital Services Act  |  EU  |  Online Safety Act  |  regulation  |  U.S. Government  |  UK age verification  |  United States