Europe stunned the world with its ‘regulatory tsunami’ this year—but AI and Trump will add new snags in 2025

But given the new regulations, it also looks like a ring of fire that Big Tech cannot escape.

To be sure, the U.S. has been amping up its Big Tech scrutiny, too, signaling an agreement that the group’s power needs to be checked. Earlier this year, a federal court called Google “a monopolist,” resulting in a possible breakup of the search giant.

“Globally, or certainly between the U.S. and Europe, there is now agreement on the on the need for regulation. Where there’s disagreement is how that gets implemented and who implements it,” Blaber said. “I think the DMA is a positive thing, you could argue it’s 15 years too late.”

The timing is an added complication—companies have gone decades without any regulatory oversight, and now, they’re expected to operate differently and realign to a new standard.

During Donald Trump’s first term as president, the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission had been investigating Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Google for their monopolistic practices. As he was campaigning in the lead-up to the 2024 election, Trump vowed that he wouldn’t let the EU take tech companies for a ride after he got a call from a worried Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple.

“He [Cook] said something that was interesting,” Trump said in the PBD Podcast aired in October. “He said they’re using that to run their enterprise, meaning Europe is their enterprise. I said, ‘That’s a lot… But Tim, I got to get elected first, but I’m not going to let them take advantage of our companies — that won’t, you know, be happening.’”

Earlier this month, Trump’s tone was different as he accused Big Tech of “using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans.”

As the new year draws closer, and with it, a new Trump presidency with tech juggernaut Elon Musk as his confidant, could the conversation around regulation change in any way?

“In Europe, there’s definitely a feeling that competitiveness, that the regulatory tsunami, needs to be calmed down,” Bill Echikson, a senior fellow at The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), told Fortune. He admits that a Trump presidency or Musk’s political power could mean for U.S. approach to the subject is still unclear.

However, the U.S. would have more weapons in its arsenal if the EU ramped up tech scrutiny in a way that peeves Trump. In September, incoming Vice President JD Vance suggested that the U.S. might halt NATO funding if the EU fines X.

“The political direction is competitiveness over regulation,” Echikson said, adding that the EU’s consideration of a new Digital Fairness Act could be a litmus test for how the two regions spar on regulation.

In CCS Insights’ annual trend forecast report, the group predicts that 2025 could be the year the U.S. and Europe’s divergence on regulatory norms becomes even more stark, particularly with how it regulates AI.

“I think the key one would be the AI Act, which is getting a lot of criticism as frightening away AI deployment from the big American companies and AI investment from The European startups,” Echikson said.

The EU Commission’s new competition head is Teresa Ribera, who plans to maintain a tight grip on regulation. This includes a possible Google split to rein in the company’s market dominance. With new leadership on both sides of the Atlantic, a new order is sure to reshape 2025—it just remains to be seen how far-reaching its impact is.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com