In today’s Digest, we discuss Trump’s warning of tariffs on nations discriminating against US tech, Elon Musk’s xAI suing Apple and OpenAI for monopoly practices, and Japanese media suing Perplexity for copyright infringement.

Trump warns tariffs on nations ‘discriminating’ against US tech

Trump has warned tariffs on countries imposing digital taxes on US tech firms. He said measures such as the UK’s digital services tax and similar rules in France, Italy and Spain discriminate against companies like Google, Meta, Amazon and Apple.

Trump said he will add tariffs on exports and restrict technology sales if those policies stay in place. “As the president of the United States, I will stand up to countries that attack our incredible American tech companies,” Trump said. “Unless these discriminatory actions are removed, I… will impose substantial additional tariffs on that country’s exports to the USA, and institute export restrictions on our highly protected technology and chips.”

The warning comes as the UK and EU enforce digital services taxes and regulations such as the Digital Services Act. Both regions have trade agreements with the US, but Trump’s stance signals renewed trade tension over tech policy.

Elon Musk’s xAI sues Apple & OpenAI for monopoly practices

xAI has filed a lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI, accusing them of working together to block competition in the AI market. The complaint claims Apple’s partnership with OpenAI gives ChatGPT exclusive access to billions of user prompts from iPhones, creating a major advantage for model improvement.

The suit also alleges Apple is pushing down rival chatbot apps in App Store rankings. It argues Apple is using its dominance in smartphones to favour OpenAI, calling the company “a monopolist in the market for generative AI chatbots.”

Japanese media sue Perplexity for copyright infringement

Nikkei and Asahi Shimbun have sued AI search engine Perplexity in Tokyo, accusing the company of copying and storing their articles without permission. The publishers allege Perplexity bypassed technical safeguards and used their content to generate answers that included incorrect information attributed to their reporting.

The companies are seeking ¥2.2bn (£11m) each in damages and want Perplexity to delete all stored material. Nikkei said in its statement that “Perplexity’s actions amount to large-scale, ongoing ‘free riding’ on article content that journalists from both companies have spent immense time and effort to research and write, while Perplexity pays no compensation.”