TheChek News Flow

EU Delayed Punishing Apple, Meta Just Before Trade Talks Started

Officials postponed an announcement initially planned for this week

The European Union recently delayed penalizing Apple and Meta Platforms, temporarily avoiding a conflict with the Trump administration during a week that saw the bloc ramp up its push for a trade deal with the U.S.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, had initially planned to announce cease-and-desist orders targeting the tech giants on Tuesday and had informed at least one of the companies of that timing, people familiar with the matter said. Both companies could have also been slapped with fines.

The decision to postpone the announcement was made shortly before EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič met with U.S. officials in Washington on Monday, for his first in-person talks since President Trump announced a 90-day pause on some tariffs. In addition, this week Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met with Trump, who said he would have “very little problem” making a trade deal with the EU.

The rulings are still expected to go ahead, and it isn’t immediately clear how long the delay might last.

Asked Tuesday about the cases, a commission spokesman told reporters no dates had been announced but technical work had been completed. “We’re currently working on the adoption of final decisions in the short term,” the spokesman said.

The commission said Friday that it doesn’t comment on its internal planning.

The delay represents a brief reprieve for Meta META -0.17%decrease; red down pointing triangle Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Meta executives had pressed U.S. trade officials to fight the expected order. Trump has complained about EU tech regulations and threatened earlier this year to respond with tariffs.

Zuckerberg defended the company this past week in a U.S. Federal Trade Commission trial that could end up forcing Meta to sell valuable pieces of its business empire.

European officials say they won’t water down their tech regulations in response to U.S. pressure. But some lawmakers in the European Parliament have questioned whether the cases have become political as the EU seeks to negotiate a deal with the U.S. on trade.

The Meta and Apple AAPL 1.39%increase; green up pointing triangle cases both relate to alleged breaches of the EU’s Digital Markets Act, a law that seeks to make it easier for smaller companies to compete with their big tech rivals. The commission opened investigations in March 2024 and issued preliminary findings in both cases last summer.

The cases carry a potential fine of up to 10% of the companies’ global annual revenue, though people familiar with the matter have said they expect fines would be much lower. The cease-and-desist orders, which target business practices, are expected to have a bigger impact on the two companies than any potential fines.

A spokesman for Meta referred to earlier comments that its concern isn’t only about fines. “It’s about the commission seeking to handicap successful American businesses simply because they’re American, while letting Chinese and European rivals off the hook,” the statement said.

The commission says it enforces the bloc’s laws equally for all companies that operate in the EU.

The Meta case relates to whether the company should be forced to allow users to use Facebook and Instagram for free without seeing personalized ads, a key source of revenue for the company.

The EU said last year that Meta’s policy of requiring users to choose between buying a subscription or allowing Meta to use their data for targeted advertising didn’t comply with the Digital Markets Act. In an effort to appease regulators, Meta last fall introduced an alternative that allows users to see “less personalized ads” without buying a subscription.

A separate case against Apple deals with the iPhone maker’s App Store rules, which the commission has previously said prevent app developers from freely directing users to alternative ways to make purchases.

The commission has said Apple restricts how developers can communicate with users and charges fees for facilitating transactions outside the App Store in a way that goes beyond what is necessary.

Apple referred on Friday to its previous comments on the case. It has said that developers who use the App Store benefit from Apple’s proprietary technology and other tools.

Last month, a committee of EU member state representatives approved a plan to order both companies to comply with the Digital Markets Act. The committee was due to reconvene Monday to approve issuing fines, but that meeting was postponed, some of the people familiar with the matter said.

Ralph Lauren CEO remains ‘positively paranoid’ amid US volatility

‘At a time of uncertainty, consumers will tend to gravitate to friends they know, products they trust,’ Patrice Louvet says at brand’s autumn 2025 show in New York

On Thursday, Ralph Lauren unveiled its autumn 2025 collection at the Jack Shainman Gallery in downtown New York. The Clock Tower, a Beaux Arts space with Corinthian columns and marble walls, provided a fitting backdrop for a show titled “Modern Romantics,” watched by Hollywood heavyweights Michelle Williams, Naomi Watts and Anne Hathaway. The collection balanced classic Ralph Lauren Americana — think leather jodhpur trousers and velvet prairie dresses in autumnal tones — with light, romantic flourishes like lace-crocheted gowns and jabot blouses.

Aesthetically, it was firmly on brand: a display of optimism grounded in Lauren’s own quintessentially American rags-to-riches rise from a boy in the working-class section of the Bronx to a self-made billionaire. But at a time in the US when federal programmes designed to level the playing field in education and employment are under siege, it’s hard to imagine a story like his unfolding today. Maybe that’s the point: to dream, to believe in what’s possible in a world that could exist.

But as President Donald Trump’s tariff policy pivots continue to throw global markets into flux, the real world could become a nightmare for many fashion brands. Both LVMH and Hermès missed analysts’ estimates in the first-quarter results they posted this week, with the latter pledging to increase prices on its US goods to offset the 10 per cent tariffs the Trump administration is now levying on European imports. Shares in Ralph Lauren have slid 6 per cent in the last month as investors weigh the impact of economic uncertainty on discretionary spending.

We remain “positively paranoid,” says Patrice Louvet, the chief executive and president of Ralph Lauren. The advantage he sees in the business is the clarity of its purpose — a familiar identity that its customers have been buying into for half a decade. That’s the old-money vision of American elegance that sells a breadth of products from Polo bear knit sweaters to a filet mignon at one of its Polo Bars.

At 85, Ralph Lauren still serves as the company’s chief creative officer. “At a time of uncertainty, consumers will tend to gravitate to friends they know, products they trust,” says Louvet. “Ralph [Lauren] and his team have done a wonderful job staying very clear on who we are, and consistent, yet keeping it fresh at the same time. And that’s the balance that we need to strike.”

In a moody, saturated colour palette, a feminine Edwardian blouse was toughened with a distressed leather jacket, a masculine double-breasted suit cinched at the waist, and a tailored coat layered over a cotton top with flouncy cuffs worn by South Sudanese-Australian model Adut Akech. But perhaps the blend of classic and modern was best exemplified by what Hathaway wore off the runway: a tan trenchcoat paired with crystal-embellished ripped jeans.

But to stay “fresh” even in turbulent times means the business needs to evolve too. “We’ve got a very strong men’s business,” says Louvet. “The women’s business is less than a third of the company. So it points to a massive opportunity.”

The lifeblood of any fashion company is attracting new audiences — and Lauren is doing that well by showing up at major sports moments such as the US Open and partnering with influencers who resonate with younger audiences, like @izzipoopi, who sat front row. Last month, it launched a virtual world on Roblox, a gaming platform popular with Gen Z and Gen Alpha. And in April, it introduced a dedicated Polo Women’s shop on Douyin, China’s leading short-form video app known for driving real-time purchases among digitally savvy Gen Z consumers.

“This company has been around for 58 years because it’s been able to renew its customer base,” says Louvet. “It’s not just one thing — it’s about targeting their interests, where they shop, where they engage with brands, and using a portfolio of activities to connect in ways that resonate.”

Well, in life and in business, if there’s hope, it lies with the kids.

Meta founder’s antitrust defence rests on showing that TikTok is rapidly expanding in his main market

A critical part of Mark Zuckerberg’s defence in the most serious antitrust challenge in Meta’s history this week had little to do with the technology giant and much to do with TikTok. 

In testimony across three days, the billionaire tech founder repeatedly told a US federal court in Washington that the video platform owned by Chinese parent ByteDance had grown to become a tremendous competitor.

The plaudits of his rival had a goal: quashing US Federal Trade Commission allegations that Meta retained an illegal monopoly, charges that, if proven, could potentially have more far-reaching consequences for Zuckerberg’s business than any commercial threat it faces. 

Lose the case, and Meta could be forced to break up its $1.5tn group and spin off its Instagram and WhatsApp apps — an outcome Zuckerberg has previously vowed to “go to the mat and fight”. Win, and it will have scored a decisive victory over a regulator that has long had Big Tech in its sights, more recently suing retail giant Amazon.

The trial comes after Zuckerberg failed to negotiate away the proceedings in the first place. According to a person familiar with the matter, the FTC had demanded $30bn as a potential settlement; Meta lowballed at $450mn then raised its proposal to $1bn after the regulator had set a floor of $18bn. The parties then decided to move to court.

At the heart of the FTC suit is an allegation that Meta employed a “systematic strategy” to eliminate competitors, including by acquiring rivals Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014 for $1bn and $19bn respectively.

FTC lawyers this week presented evidence of Zuckerberg seeing these nascent applications as a threat, including a host of uncomfortable emails. Zuckerberg in 2012 agreed to suggestions that the Instagram deal might help “neutralise a competitor” and also said he wanted Meta to “use M&A to build a competitive moat around us on mobile and ads”. 

But such tactics would only potentially be deemed illegal if the FTC can first prove that Meta retains a monopoly, an argument some antitrust experts say will be harder to stack up. It is a point Zuckerberg and former Meta chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg have focused on in their testimonies, stressing TikTok’s explosive growth to serve more than 1bn users globally. 

“What they said and thought in the past is not a great look but it does not have much probative value — if any — for whether Meta maintains a monopoly now,” said Paul Swanson, head of the antitrust and competition practice at Holland & Hart. 

“Zuckerberg and Sandberg did a good job explaining why that is a current reality — [that] TikTok and Meta do have attrition from each other and are substitutes for each other in most users’ minds.”

In antitrust challenges, the FTC must also prove there has been consumer harm, which typically would be a monopolist driving up prices. With Meta offering its services for free, the agency is instead arguing that consumers suffered a degraded user experience due to the platform’s dominance — feeds filled with adverts and poor privacy protections. 

The key challenge for the FTC will be convincing James Boasberg, the presiding judge, that Meta has dominated — in part via acquisitions — a “personal social-networking” market focused on friends-and-family connections, which does not include TikTok or Google’s YouTube. 

A person close to the earlier settlement negotiations, which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, said that Meta’s lowball offer showed how weak it considered the FTC’s case to be. The FTC declined to comment.

“We haven’t been shy about explaining why it doesn’t make sense for the FTC to bring a case to trial that requires it to prove something every 17-year-old in America knows is absurd — that Instagram doesn’t compete with TikTok. We are prepared to win at trial,” Meta spokesperson Dani Lever said in a statement. 

But some experts argue that Boasberg, who has uttered few words all week, may be receptive to the FTC’s arguments. 

“The court is clearly open to the possibility that there is a personal social networking market,” said Kenneth Dintzer, partner in the antitrust and competition group at Crowell & Moring. He referenced a 2024 filing in which Boasberg said the FTC had “met its burden to show that other applications are not reasonable substitutes” for friends-and-family sharing.

Zuckerberg rejected this notion in court, pointing to the group rushing to develop Reels — short-form videos — in response to TikTok’s meteoric rise. TikTok’s offering had “probably [been] the highest competitive threat against Instagram and Facebook in the last few years”, Zuckerberg said.

The Meta boss also argued WhatsApp and Instagram had been acquired to accelerate their growth, pointing to the dramatic jump in users following the deals.

The FTC countered with a 2013 email, in which Zuckerberg argued ahead of the WhatsApp deal that “the biggest competitive vector for us is for some company to build out a messaging app for communicating with small groups of people, and then transform that into a broader social network”. 

After offering to teach Sandberg the board game The Settlers of Catan, Zuckerberg said in a 2012 email: “[Facebook] Messenger isn’t beating WhatsApp, Instagram was growing so much faster than us that we had to buy them for $1 billion . . . That’s not exactly killing it.”

“The confounding part of Mark’s testimony is that he’s trying to contradict statements today that he made a decade ago as these acquisitions were being contemplated in real time,” said Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel for the anti-monopoly non-profit American Economic Liberties Project.

Perhaps the most striking evidence came in the form of a Zuckerberg email in 2018, where he considered spinning off Instagram — citing exactly the kind of threat from antitrust enforcement he faces today.

As “calls to break up the big tech companies grow”, he wrote, “there is a non-trivial chance that we will be forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp in the next five to 10 years”.

US says Chinese company is helping Houthis target American warships

Satellite group linked to People’s Liberation Army has supplied images to Iran-backed group in Yemen, say officials

A Chinese satellite company linked to the country’s military is supplying Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen with imagery to target US warships and international vessels in the Red Sea, according to American officials.

The Trump administration has repeatedly warned Beijing that Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co Ltd, a commercial group with ties to the People’s Liberation Army, is providing the Houthis with the intelligence, according to the US officials.

“The United States has raised our concerns privately numerous times to the Chinese government on Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co Ltd’s role in supporting the Houthis in order to get Beijing to take action,” said a senior state department official.

The official added that China had “ignored” the concerns. He also told the Financial Times that CGSTL’s actions and “Beijing’s tacit support” despite Washington’s warnings were “yet another example of China’s empty claims to support peace”.

“We urge our partners to judge the Chinese Communist party and Chinese companies on their actions, not their empty words,” the official said.

Tammy Bruce, the state department’s spokesperson, confirmed that CGSTL was “directly supporting Iran-backed Houthi terrorist attacks on US interests”.

She added: “The US will not tolerate anyone providing support to foreign terrorist organisations such as the Houthis.”

The concern about CGSTL comes amid a deepening trade war between the Washington and Beijing after President Donald Trump slapped huge new tariffs on imports from China, which are now subject to a 145 per cent levy.

The Houthis started attacking vessels in the Red Sea, a critical maritime route for global trade and the US navy, after Israel launched a war against Hamas, another Iran-backed group, in 2023, in response to the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack.

The US has escalated attacks on the rebel group’s positions in Yemen in recent weeks, including a large military strike that was the subject of the “Signalgate” leak and signalled an escalation of the campaign.

China has expressed concern about the Houthis’ attacks. The administration of Joe Biden urged Beijing to use its leverage with Iran to rein in the Houthis, but his officials saw no evidence that China had done so.

Trump has made tackling Red Sea instability a priority, amid concerns that the Houthis continue to pose a threat to the global economy.

“Beijing should take this priority seriously when considering any future support to CGSTL,” said the US official.

China’s foreign ministry said that “since tensions in the Red Sea escalated, China has been actively working to ease the situation”.

“It is clear to the international community who is promoting dialogue and de-escalation, and who is imposing sanctions and pressure, further intensifying tensions,” it added, as it urged countries to “do more that genuinely contributes to regional peace and stability”.

CGSTL has previously come under US scrutiny, and was among groups hit by sanctions in 2023 for allegedly providing high-resolution satellite imagery to Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary army that helped President Vladimir Putin in his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The Chinese company was established in 2014 as a joint venture between the provincial government in Jilin and a branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Changchun, the province’s capital.

“Chang Guang is one of a handful of ‘ostensibly’ commercial Chinese satellite companies that are in fact deeply embedded in the military-civil fusion ecosystem, supplying global surveillance capabilities to both civilian and military customers,” said James Mulvenon, an expert on the Chinese military and intelligence services at Pamir Consulting.

Under China’s military-civil fusion programme, companies must share technology with the PLA when ordered by the government.

Matthew Bruzzese, a China defence expert at BluePath Labs, a consulting firm that works with the US government, last year said CGSTL had 100 satellites in orbit, although it planned to have 300 by the end of 2025 which would enable it to take repeat images of any location in the world every 10 minutes.

Bruzzese said CGSTL had “close connections” to the Chinese government, communist party and military. But he said there were fewer public mentions about its PLA ties from 2020, suggesting that it had “become more wary of publicly discussing these connections”.

The US has in recent years imposed sanctions on dozens of Chinese commercial groups with alleged connections to the military.

Bruzzese said CGSTL had provided briefings to senior Chinese officials about its applications, including those for “military intelligence” and had demonstrated its technology before several top PLA officers, including Zhang Youxia, the top general in the Chinese military who is second-in-command after President Xi Jinping.

US concerns about CGSTL come as the Pentagon increasingly focuses on Chinese military activity in space.

The Pentagon has said China put 200 satellites in orbit in 2023, second only to the US. It added that Beijing was also exporting its satellite technology, including domestically developed remote-sensing satellites — the same kind of technology being deployed by CGSTL.

US secretary of state says Washington will focus on ‘other priorities’ if war cannot be ended soon

President Donald Trump will abandon attempting to negotiate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine within a “matter of days” unless he sees clear signs a deal is possible, the top US diplomat has said.

Marco Rubio, US secretary of state, said on Friday that Washington would not pursue the Ukraine talks “for weeks or months” and would focus on “other priorities” if there was not a breakthrough soon.

“If it’s not possible, if we’re so far apart that this is not going to happen, then I think the president is at a point where he is going to say, well, we’re done,” Rubio told reporters on Friday.

His remarks came after a day-long meeting in Paris on Thursday hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron that was attended by a US delegation, including Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff, alongside officials from Ukraine, UK and Germany.

“We’re not going to continue to fly all over the world and do meeting after meeting after meeting if no progress is being made,” Rubio said. The US wants to figure out “in a matter of days, not weeks”, if a peace is attainable, he said, adding that Trump “felt strongly” that the talks could not drag on. 

Rubio did not elaborate on what the implications would be for US military support to Ukraine if Trump abandoned the effort to broker a peace between Moscow and Kyiv.

The Paris gathering aimed to jump-start talks that have stalled since Trump re-engaged with Russian President Vladimir Putin in February and pressured Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy to negotiate a settlement. Ukraine has said since that it is open to a temporary ceasefire, but Russia has delayed. 

“If both sides are serious, then we want to help, but if it’s not going to happen, then we’re just going to move on to other topics that are equally if not more important for the US,” Rubio said.

Ukraine said on Thursday that it had signed a preliminary agreement with the US over sharing its mineral and energy resources, which has been a key demand from Trump, who sees it as a way to pay back the US for billions of dollars in military aid.

Such an accord had been close to being signed in February but was derailed by an argument between Trump and Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.

Rubio said the talks in Paris were “very positive” and that the involvement of European countries had been constructive. Another meeting in a similar format will be held next week in London to allow the US to get Russian input and for Ukraine to decide on its positions.

A French official said Thursday’s gathering was significant because it began “a new positive process” in peace talks that this time had more involvement from European countries.

The talks were the first high-level, in-person talks in the US’s efforts that have included European powers directly. A British official also said the discussion felt significant regarding the US getting to the same position as Europeans on Putin’s lack of commitment to peace plans.

“The UK, France and Germany can help us move the ball on this and get this closer to a resolution,” Rubio said.

Rubio declined to describe the framework that the US has put on the table at this stage. He added that it was too early to make definitive decisions on security guarantees, although they had been discussed.

Ukraine has pushed hard for such guarantees, especially regarding its ability to maintain and build up a strong army to defend itself, and its European allies have also emphasised their importance.