The clash comes barely a week after Brussels moved to implement the EU-U.S. Turnberry trade pact.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on Thursday sharply criticized a German draft law that would force streaming platforms like Netflix to invest in local productions, warning the measure could violate the EU-U.S. trade agreement finalized last week.
Greer attacked the legislation, approved Wednesday by the Cabinet of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, as treating American companies “like a piggy bank for pet, protectionist projects.” In a statement to Bloomberg News, the U.S. trade chief argued the draft law would force American companies to bankroll German cultural projects.
This latest flare-up in mutual trade relations comes just a week after Brussels agreed to implement the transatlantic trade pact struck last summer at Donald Trump’s golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland. Under the agreement, the EU pledged to scrap tariffs on U.S. industrial and some agricultural goods, while Washington agreed to cap duties on most European exports at 15 percent after months of tense negotiations and tariff threats from Trump.
“If this tax on American companies is enacted, it would be at odds with the Turnberry Agreement, in which the European Union committed to ‘address unjustified digital trade barriers’ — not erect new ones,” Greer said.
The criticism follows scrutiny by Republicans in Washington of a similar Canadian streaming law requiring tech platforms to financially support domestic cultural production. House Republicans in March introduced legislation seeking a U.S. trade investigation into Canada’s Online Streaming Act, arguing it unfairly targets American companies and could justify retaliatory tariffs.
Germany’s proposed law would require streaming companies and broadcasters to invest at least 8 percent of their annual German revenues into domestic and wider European film and television production, or face financial penalties. Berlin also announced plans to nearly double public support for local productions to €250 million.
Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil defended the overhaul in February, saying it would create “planning certainty for more investment in national and international productions” and send “a clear signal” for Germany’s media industry and “cultural diversity.”
Netflix has pushed back. “If regulation ultimately makes it harder to invest in ambitious projects and, as a result, fewer titles are produced overall, that benefits neither audiences nor the production location,” Wolf Osthaus, Netflix’s senior global affairs director in Germany, told AFP.
The dispute opens another front in increasingly strained U.S.-German relations after Merz accused Washington in April of having been “humiliated” by Iran, and U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany at the beginning of May.