Today, the European Commission issued a preliminary finding that Amazon Web Services is a “gatekeeper” under the Digital Markets Act. It is the first time Brussels has aimed the DMA at cloud infrastructure, and it follows a pattern NetChoice has documented since the law took effect: the DMA handicaps successful American companies under the banner of fair competition. The cloud designation makes that plain. To reach AWS at all, the Commission has to step around its own rules.
A Law that has to Break Its Own Thresholds to Land
The DMA is supposed to run on clear, objective criteria. A company qualifies as a gatekeeper when it clears specific quantitative thresholds: 1. €7.5 billion in EU turnover or €75 billion in market capitalization, 2. a core platform service in at least three member states and 3. 45 million monthly active EU users. When the Commission opened its cloud probes, it conceded the obvious: AWS and other American cloud providers do not meet those size, user-number and market-position thresholds for the cloud. The honest conclusion would be that the law does not apply.
Instead, the Commission reserved itself the power to investigate companies that do not meet the formal definition of a gatekeeper, and it is using that power now. When a regulator writes thresholds, finds that the target clears none of them and presses ahead anyway, the thresholds were never the point. They are a formality to be set aside whenever the preferred outcome requires it.
The Same Protectionist Machine, Pointed at a New Target
None of this is new. NetChoice has called the DMA a blatant attack on U.S. tech, designed to prop up European competitors at America’s expense, built on the “incredibly subjective justification” of ensuring fair competition. The numbers tell the story: of the companies designated under the law, only two are not American. The DMA’s thresholds were drawn to capture major American firms while leaving European services alone. That is regulatory protectionism dressed up as competition policy.
The cloud action fits the script. AWS has committed tens of billions of euros to data centers across Spain and other European markets, plus billions more in new renewable energy infrastructure. That spending creates jobs across local supply chains, fuels the growth of European small and medium-sized businesses and gives European companies the tools to compete globally. The reward for that investment is a gatekeeper label the company does not qualify for under the law’s own math. Europe is once again cracking open an American piggy bank for a political payday.
A Burden on a Market that is Already Competitive and Already Regulated
Set aside who is being targeted and the policy still does not hold up. Cloud is one of the most contested corners of the technology economy, with new entrants, falling prices, constant innovation and heavy capital investment. A provider earns a strong position in that market by giving customers lower costs, better service and more capability than the alternatives, which is exactly the competition consumers want. AWS built its position by competing for every workload, and customers reward the providers that serve them best. More than 70 percent of European cloud customers already use more than one provider, the opposite of the single-gateway dependency the law assumes. Punishing a company for winning that competition turns the DMA against the very customers it claims to protect.
The cloud sector is also already covered by tailored European law. The EU Data Act sets obligations on the exact concerns the cloud probe raises: switching costs, interoperability and data portability. Layering DMA mandates on top would pile duplicative and potentially contradictory requirements onto providers, and the cost lands on European organizations that depend on cloud services to run and grow. This is how the DMA’s compliance burdens have already slowed American tech innovation in Europe, diverting resources from building products to fighting legal battles.
Washington has Leverage. This is the Moment to Use It.
The U.S. government has already named the problem. The White House has called the DMA extortion of American companies, the administration has described it as extraterritorial regulation used to coerce the United States and the FTC Chair has called it a tax on American firms. The administration has the standing and the tools to push back, and a designation that meets none of the law’s own thresholds is the moment to do it.
Brussels should hear that attacking American companies for their success carries a cost. American leadership in cloud computing is a strategic asset, and a foreign regulator that bends its own rules to reach across the Atlantic and penalize that success is harassing American industry abroad. The administration must make clear that American innovation is not Europe’s to tax, fine or regulate into retreat.