EXCLUSIVE — An outside group aligned with the White House is urging President Donald Trump to keep up his pressure campaign against the European Union‘s extraterritorial environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, mandates.
The EU-U.S. Forum, a non-profit conservative organization founded by former Trump administration officials Matt Mowers and Joe Grogan, is amplifying its call with a six-figure TV and digital ad buy for a new 30-second spot, “America Calls The Shots.”
The ad, which will air in the Washington, D.C. area for the next two weeks, particularly criticizes the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, or CSRD, and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, CS3D.
“Europe shouldn’t get to call the shots in America, but with the EU’s compliance regulations CSRD and CS3D, that’s exactly what’s happening,” the narrator says. “These ESG regulations force American companies to comply with Europe’s far-left climate rules even while operating in the U.S. That means higher costs for families, slower energy development, and fewer jobs.”
The voice-over adds: “But President Trump knows that in America, we call the shots. He’s standing up to protect our hard-earned freedom from Europe’s red tape agenda. Tell him to keep fighting back.”
For Mowers, an EU-U.S. Forum senior adviser and a former senior White House adviser at the State Department, the ad underscores the EU’s policies in order to stop them from spreading to the U.S., since there are provisions, for example, compelling American companies on American soil to comply with Brussels’s climate agenda.
“Europe should never get to call the shots in America, but that’s what Brussels is trying to do with the CSRD and CS3D,” Mowers told the Washington Examiner. “These extraterritorial rules reach deep into U.S. supply chains, saddle American companies with costly foreign reporting schemes, and shift costs onto American workers and families. President Trump is right to defend U.S. sovereignty and competitiveness, and we’re urging him to keep fighting back.”
A spokeswoman for the EU-U.S. Forum emphasized Mowers’s point: “The ad warns that EU compliance regimes would raise costs for American families, slow domestic energy development, and eliminate jobs, all by imposing Brussels’ far-left climate rules beyond Europe’s borders. The message is clear: extraterritorial regulation from the EU undermines U.S. law, our growth, and self-government.”
The ad coincides with U.S. Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder adding his voice last week to Trump’s campaign, describing the CSRD and CS3D, in addition to the EU’s Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, as being “contrary to the EU’s best economic interest.”
“One of them makes it very difficult for the EU to get inexpensive energy, which it desperately needs, and the other makes it difficult for it to get the cloud services and the sophisticated AI software that they need and the investment they need here in the European continent,” Puzder told Bloomberg.
It also coincides with Trump administration scrutiny of the European Commission’s decision last week to fine X 120 million euros, or $140 million, over its blue check verification system, the first penalties under the Digital Services Act, alleging X’s system is deceptive because the social media platform is not “meaningfully verifying users.” The EU also expressed concerns with X’s transparency regarding ads and lack of disclosure with respect to public data.
“The European Commission’s $140 million fine isn’t just an attack on @X, it’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X. “The days of censoring Americans online are over.”
More broadly, the Trump administration has adopted a more adversarial posture toward the EU than previous administrations, especially because of the Russia–Ukraine war and dissatisfaction over NATO defense spending amid trade deal negotiations.
Last week, the United States’s new National Security Strategy warned that Europe faces “civilizational erasure” due to mass migration and other political issues.
That posture was best demonstrated by Vice President JD Vance‘s address to this year’s Munich Security Conference, in which he claimed Europe’s primary threats are internal, including those related to free speech and democratic values.
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This week’s ad comes after the EU-US Forum spent six figures last month on a spot, “Dictate,” and conducted polling that found a majority of American voters were against the EU’s CSRD and CS3D and would encourage Trump to use trade leverage to protect American companies from these and other ESG regulations.
