Apple made $391 billion in revenue last year. The Trump administration is now threatening trade sanctions against the EU to protect that company from having to let you install apps from somewhere other than Apple's own store. I need you to sit with that for a second.
The EU's Digital Markets Act requires Apple to allow competing app stores, let developers use third-party payment systems, and stop punishing developers who tell users about cheaper options elsewhere. These are not radical demands. They are the kind of thing you would want if you had ever tried to buy a Kindle book on your iPhone and wondered why the button to do that simply does not exist.
Apple Is Not a Victim Here
Apple's response to the DMA has been, to put it charitably, creative compliance. The company invented a new fee structure: a 5% Core Technology Commission plus a 2% acquisition fee on EU alternative transactions. So developers can technically use external payment systems, but Apple still collects. The Ninth Circuit ruled in December 2025 that Apple cannot charge commissions on steered transactions in the US. Apple is doing it anyway in Europe, just with different paperwork.
The research brief I am working from says Apple "went so far as to demand the EU repeal these laws" and is "likely still non-compliant in several ways" for which it "should have been fined tens of billions of dollars by now." That is not a company being bullied by foreign regulators. That is a company that has spent years treating a $3.8 trillion market cap as a force field.
Here is where I will give the other side a fair shot: there is a real argument that the EU sometimes uses consumer protection language to disadvantage American companies specifically. That concern is not crazy. But Apple's app store fees are not an American cultural export worth defending. They are a toll booth. Protecting the toll booth with trade sanctions is not trade policy; it is lobbying at gunpoint.
What This Actually Costs You
If you are an iPhone user in the US, you are living in the version of this story where Apple still controls everything. The EU experiment is the only real-world test of what happens when that control loosens. Early results: third-party app stores exist, the sky has not fallen, and developers have more options. That is useful data for American regulators to watch.
The Trump administration threatening sanctions against EU enforcement does not just protect Apple's margins. It actively slows down the pressure that might eventually force similar changes here. Every month the EU backs off is another month American iPhone users pay Apple's 30% cut on every app subscription, every in-app purchase, every digital good. That adds up. My own App Store spending last year was embarrassing, and I write about this stuff for a living.
Russia tried a version of this pressure in April 2026, blocking Apple ID payments to force Apple to restore Russian apps. State Duma lawmakers immediately admitted it would probably fail. Coercing a tech giant with trade threats tends to produce creative workarounds, not genuine compliance. The EU's actual legal framework, with real fines attached, is the only thing that has moved Apple at all.
Washington should let the EU do its job. Then American regulators should read the case files, because the App Store rules that frustrate developers in Brussels are the exact same rules frustrating developers in Brooklyn.
