Zuckerberg tries to enlist Trump in fight against Meta EU ruling

Mark Zuckerberg was quick to jump on board with President Trump earlier this year. Now he is calling in a favor.

After Trump’s election, the Meta Platforms chief executive embraced the incoming president’s priorities. He scrapped Meta’s diversity team, ended its fact-checking program, and appointed UFC President Dana White, a Trump ally, to its board. Clad in a maroon tie, Zuckerberg was among several Silicon Valley CEOs present for Trump’s inauguration.

In recent weeks, in one of Zuckerberg’s first specific asks since Trump took office, Meta executives have pressed U.S. trade officials to fight against an expected European Union fine and cease-and-desist order, people familiar with the conversations said.

The expected decision relates to whether Meta should be forced to give Facebook and Instagram users the option of accessing those services free without seeing personalized ads, something that would undercut the main way Meta makes money.

Meta’s goal is to push the Trump administration, which is readying a new package of tariffs expected to hit the EU and others on Wednesday, to respond aggressively against what the company says would be a discriminatory decision, the people added. Meta hopes U.S. pressure will persuade the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, to water down how the company has to comply with the decision.

“This is not just 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,” a Meta spokesman said.

A European Commission spokesman said officials enforce the bloc’s laws equally for all companies that operate in the EU, regardless of where they are incorporated.

Zuckerberg has been frustrated for the better part of a year at a growing number of European regulations, rulings and taxes, according to people close to the company. After the inauguration, Zuckerberg said he wanted to work with Trump to push back on global regulations, including in Europe, where he said laws are “institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative.”

In February, Zuckerberg met with U.S. officials in Washington and urged them to take on overseas regulations that Meta says impede American competitiveness overseas, according to people familiar with the meetings.

Last week, during a meeting with EU officials in Washington, U.S. trade officials brought up concerns about the EU’s Digital Markets Act—the law Meta is accused of breaching—among other complaints against the bloc, people briefed on the meeting said.

A White House spokesman declined to comment. Trump in February signed an executive order that threatened tariffs in response to “burdensome and restrictive” tech regulations that “inhibit the growth or intended operation” of U.S. companies.

The EU’s competition czar, Teresa Ribera, has said the Commission was moving ahead with its tech enforcement and doesn’t take decisions based on political developments in other countries.

Yet some EU officials have been hesitant to announce fines and compliance orders for U.S. tech companies in the days before the Trump administration is expected to issue reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday, a person familiar with the Commission’s thinking said.

For now at least, the decision against Meta—and a similar case against Apple—is still officially on track. A committee of EU member-state representatives on Friday approved the Commission’s plan to order both companies to comply with the bloc’s tech law, a person familiar with the matter said.

The pending EU decision against Meta falls under the bloc’s Digital Markets Act, which the EU says is aimed at helping smaller companies compete with tech giants. The EU last year issued preliminary charges under the law alleging that Meta’s policy of requiring users to choose between buying a subscription or allowing the company to use their data for targeted advertising was illegal.

The Commission has said it wants Europeans to decide how their data is used and to give smaller companies a better chance to compete against tech giants with vast stores of personal data.

In a bid to appease regulators, Meta last fall introduced a third option that it called “less personalized ads.” But the company recently said in a compliance report that the Commission was making demands “that go beyond what is written in the law.”

Meta worries that the EU could attempt to force it to sell ads that are even less personalized or require the company to make the option for less personalized ads more prominent, people familiar with the company’s thinking said.

Such a move could undercut Meta’s revenue in Europe, a region that accounts for nearly a quarter of the company’s revenue, according to securities filings. For Meta, it would amount to being forced to offer its core products without a business model to support it, the people said.

Write to Sam Schechner at Sam.Schechner@wsj.com and Kim Mackrael at kim.mackrael@wsj.com