Defending MAGA-Speech: Trump’s War on Global Data Privacy

Abstract

In little more than six months since his second inauguration President Donald Trump has set the scene for an authoritarian regime in the US, with an aggressive foreign policy to match. Global data privacy laws are likely to be one target, and perhaps one casualty, of this “authoritarian turn”. The analysis in this article does not focus on the adverse effect of Trump’s policies on the privacy of Americans; it is concerned with their effects on the rest of the world and is written from a non-American perspective.

Three building blocks enable Trump’s authoritarianism. Step 1: Using any weapon available: Trump will use any weapon available to him against perceived enemies, both domestically and abroad, irrespective of the irrelevance or lack of proportionality of the weapon and its use. Step 2: Preventing US Courts from impeding the Administration: The US courts have been gagged, prevented from taking actions which impede the actions of the Federal government, or of Trump in his capacity as President. Step 3: Protecting the ‘natural rights’ of MAGA-speech: The State Department has informed Congress that a new ‘Office of Natural Rights’ will focus on ‘traditional western conceptions of core freedoms and advance the Department’s affirmative vision of civil liberties’.” We can refer to the types of free speech that these ‘natural rights’ will protect as ‘MAGA-speech’. The new US ideology becomes the domestic and international protection of MAGA- speech.

One result is Trump’s declaration of a global war on privacy. The broad aims of Trump’s plan to take punitive steps against foreign governments is seen most clearly in a Presidential memo ‘Defending American companies’ of 21 February 2025. The overall policy of the Trump Administration is that where a foreign government imposes a fine, penalty, tax, or other burden that is ‘discriminatory, disproportionate, or designed to transfer significant funds or intellectual property’ from US companies to the foreign government or its favoured domestic entities, the US will impose tariffs or take other actions to mitigate the harm to the US. Many specific actions follow. The plan for US economic agencies to investigate actions by the EU, its member states or the UK, which ‘undermine freedom of speech and political engagement or otherwise moderate content’ and propose responses, is the heart of this expanded Trump administration plan.

AI will be one area of conflict The second Trump administration has pivoted from ‘leadership’ to ‘global AI dominance’ as its overriding objective. The US government will only contract with frontier LLM developers who ensure their systems are ‘free from top-down ideological bias’ such as DEI standards. It aims to stop US States legislating to regulate AI in ways contrary to MAGA-speech objectives. If the laws of the EU or other countries interfere with the international commercial viability of these US products, this will be seen as ‘discriminatory’ or ‘disproportionate’.

Data export restrictions will probably be the touchpaper The ‘Defending American Companies’ memo singles out for disapproval laws which ‘limit cross-border data flows’. There is a formal avenue for complaints when US tech platforms are subjected to very large fines for exporting personal data of EU residents in breach of the GDPR. 

Many such cases could result in complaints to the USTR that these practices “disproportionately harm United States companies”, and if the economic agencies agree, then they can recommend that the President authorises a punitive response. Another opportunity for such a clash is already arising in relation to the implementation of the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (DPF). The Administration has now gone further, with a FTC  letter to major US tech platforms asserting that the EU DSA cannot be applied if it jeopardises freedom of expression or the safety of US citizens.

What comes next? Data privacy seemed to have come a long way in its first 50 years, with EU standards dominating globally. But surveillance capitalist practices, mainly developed and exported by US technology platforms, also continued to strengthen. EU (and global) enforcement of data privacy laws has at long last been fighting back with fines and injunctions, but not yet strong enough to reverse surveillance capitalism, particularly its new AI version. The result looked like a stalemate with an uncertain outcome. Trump and his Administration are now rapidly ripping up this global stalemate, aiming to impose its new global ideology: MAGA- speech (the new “natural right”). The sources of effective opposition are not obvious.

Keywords: privacy, data protection, Trump, MAGA