Seema Syeda explains how Trump and his big tech robber barons are seeking to bully their way to global domination
Trump’s tariff war on the entire world is not simply about reindustrialisation and bringing manufacturing back to the United States: it’s about swinging the bludgeon of economic collapse over the global economy as leverage to expand US tech and other monopolies.
Big Tech Barons
Take a look at the Forbes list of the richest individuals in the world, and the majority of the top 20 are US billionaires who made their fortunes in the tech industry. These tech billionaires are the robber barons of our age, with their monopolistic corporations hoovering up wealth at an alarming rate, creating structural inequality on levels never before seen and feeding planetary climate collapse through their ravenous, unending consumption of data and energy.
Digital trade is dominated by the big US tech and e-commerce platforms like Google/Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta. These firms use unfair monopolistic practices to maintain market share, gobbling up smaller firms and start-ups through mergers and acquisitions. For instance, the biggest tech corporations acquired at least 191 companies globally between 2019 and 2025: this is, on average, one every eleven days. Further, the tech companies use their lobbying power to influence government competition policy, with a former Amazon boss now running the UK government’s Competition and Markets Authority.
Trade as a weapon
Unfair trade policies and deals are a critical weapon that tech corporations wield to maintain their monopolies. For instance, the US has used high tariffs to pressure Canada and New Zealand to drop their digital services tax, referred to by the Trump administration as a “non-tariff barrier” to trade. Trump is making a similar demand of the UK as a precursor to any “technology pact”. The UK’s digital services tax currently raises an average of £800 million a year and is set to bring in just under £1 billion a year from 2027 onwards. The demands to drop the tax are yet another encroachment by the US on domestic policy.
The May 8 UK-US Economic Prosperity Deal, whilst not legally binding, also contains clauses on procurement. US tech companies use an aggressive strategy to bid for government contracts at low prices and then entrench themselves in key public sector infrastructure; later increasing their prices once client dependency has been achieved. Palantir, the company which is now managing sensitive NHS data, being a case in point. The sensitive data mined in the UK and other countries is then transferred to the US and used to generate further wealth for the tech barons, while boosting the US’s militarised surveillance regime. Palantir has been contracted by the US government to centralise all department data, including the ICE immigration deportation regime, creating a comprehensive personal profile of every individual. Palantir is the same company whose CEO boasted that their AI helps Israel “kill Palestinians” and is unscrupulous in its commitment to basic human rights and international law.
Big Tech is trying to use trade deals to cement this power in perpetuity. This doesn’t just have to be through direct trade deals with the US. The UK, for instance, is acting as an aircraft carrier for US big tech. Take the recent UK-India trade deal; this pressures India to commit to “the free flow of data” and to surrender its national data, as held by the government, to an international free-for-all. The UK has an agreement with the US that implements a “data bridge” allowing UK companies to freely transfer data to US parent companies. This means any data transferred under the terms of the India-UK trade deal can eventually find its way to the United States.
The incorporation of corporate courts – officially known as Investor State Dispute Settlement or “ISDS” for short – into trade deals allows corporations to challenge any domestic legislation that threatens their profits, trampling on democratic sovereignty. Transnational corporations are already suing Colombia to the tune of $13.2 billion, undermining the country’s existing environmental and indigenous rights protections using ISDS clauses in bilateral trade agreements. Such clauses have been the sticking point of the ongoing negotiations towards a Bilateral Investment Treaty between India and the UK. They must be stopped.
Building resistance
Global Justice Now has a long-running campaign to end ISDS as well as to stop further UK trade agreements with the US. You can sign the petitions and take further action by visiting the GJN website at www.globaljustice.org.uk. For those of us in the UK, pushing the UK government not to capitulate to US demands and to stop being an aircraft carrier for US big tech by placing ISDS in trade deals is a key pressure point in the global resistance to Big Tech. Join us in our fight against unjust trade and big tech monopoly.