Surveying the groups defenses in aleppo, syria. A german lawmakers says if the u. K. Wants the advantages of the European Unions single market, it will have to pay into the eus budget. He says norway is a nonmember but contributes to the blocks finances in return for market access. A new poll Shows Hillary clinton leading donald trump in pennsylvania. Libertarian gary johnson is at 6 . Global news 24 hours a day powered by more than 2600 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. Im mark crumpton. Bloomberg west is next. Emily im emily chang and this is bloomberg west. The eu hands apples harshest penalty ever, ordering them to cough up 14 billion. But will the worlds Richest Company pay . Is europe putting the tech giant on notice . Hes the godfather of online blogging ev williams join us on a conversation from everything on the freedom of internet to the future of publishing. And making tech m a history set to close a megahead deal after it was rubberstamped by chinese regulators. But first to our lead european regulators slam apple with a 14. 5 lien dollar tax bill, far and away the largest tax penalty in a crackdown on socalled sweetheart deals. In this case, ireland, its Corporate Tax rate is the lowest in western europe and has attracted more than 700 u. S. Companies to set up shop, including google and facebook. Apple employees about 6000 people in ireland but the eu competition commissioner says ireland allowed apple to pay an effective tax rate of 1 on european profits down to. 005 in 2014 and that gave apple an unfair advantage. Here she is in an interview with bloomberg earlier. That tax rate in ireland is 12. 5 and obviously, most companies at the national or multinational level pay the tax rate or Corporate Tax rate in ireland and they have to look at some companies in case apple only pays a tiny, tiny fraction they themselves have to pay. That is obviously not fair competition. It is not a level playing field. Emily we spoke to the irish finance minister. But first, i want to bring in matt larson who has been doing a deep dive as well as our Bloomberg News reporter who covers apple for us. We knew apple was going to appeal, but what was the response from the company . Alex that they are not happy. I think a lot of people were surprised about the scale of the back payment date are going to have to come up with. This agreement has been put in place since 1991 and it was always legal. They never used any illegal but the agreement they had was such that it was above board. Emily we have a letter from tim cook to users, including the original pictures of steve jobs at the factory in ireland. Alex he went along and opened a plant in cork. Apple, as ever, they talk about the customer and not journalists. Who is writing the story, of course, the journalists. Guest apple in ireland will appeal this to the General Court in luxembourg. Its the Court Hearing the appeals in the starbucks netherlands investigation and the Fiat Chrysler case, both of which are significantly smaller but could give some indication into how this Appeals Court may take the decisions. This whole process is going to take two years at least to determine and after that, there are further opportunities to appeal to even higher courts in europe. Its going to be quite a while before we get a decision in these cases. Emily the u. S. Has been stepping up its defense apple, calling the eu a supernatural tax authority, indicating they are overstepping their bounds. What did we hear from the United States government today . Alex i think you have to be careful about calling it a defense of apple. They are not necessarily interested in ensuring the taxes paid in the u. S. Every dollar apple pays in taxes overseas is deductible from the tax they might have to pay should they have to repatriate their fund. Emily we mentioned that apple is fighting this ruling. Ireland is fighting this as well. Why would ireland want to collect 14 billion from the Richest Company in the world . Mark barton spoke to Michael Noonan earlier and pointed out the Opposition Party in ireland would like to see just that. Mark why dont you just accept money and shut up . 13 billion is a lot of money. Guest i have a responsibility for advising the government on these matters. This has rescued ireland from 2011 on and from the creation of high level jobs, its fundamental to our economic policies and we stand by our economic policies and were going to protect our economic policies. We are not going to get into a situation of short term gain for longterm damage to the economy. Emily standing his ground there. What kind of longterm advantage are we talking about . Alex as we heard yesterday, people were saying on a scale of one to 10, 10 being extremely damaging, 23. Ireland has 140,000 people employed by u. S. Tech companies and the risk is they start to be put at risk and it ceases to be the place where Companies Might go if they go to europe. Ireland is about 180 billion euros in debt, so this will go toward paying that off. Why should i subsidize apple to have 5500 jobs in ireland . Emily youve been looking at the tax structure other companies have. Do any of them have this similar arrangement . Matt a lot of Companies Make use of ireland we think about it as the austin, texas of europe. Theyve developed favorable tax laws related to transfer pricing. As a result, you have a lot of companies that have organizations, subsidiaries set up in ireland that have transfer pricing arrangements in place. You have life science from a pharmaceutical companies that have significant operations. There are favorable tax laws and favorable treatment for other tax system treats these pricing agreements. Its a little bit of a warning shot and may encourage some companies to take a look at whether maybe they negotiated to suite a deal or take a look at corporate structures and how their overall setup is working for them. Emily what about Companies Like google or facebook which have big aces in ireland. Matt a lot of companies have headquartered there. Linkedin, paypal, ea Fidelity Investments even has significant operations there. When you are one of these organizations, you have to take a very close look at how your taxation is working, not just in the revenue you are sending but what are the communications you have had with the tax authorities . Its not just here is our revenue, take a percentage of it. Looking at Company Transfers and deals amongst the subsidiaries. You have to take into account what the basis is there and what percentage you are applying to that base that is going to be taxed. I think companies will have to take a look at the way there internal operations look and look at the deals they have struck with irish tax authorities. Emily apple shares ending today slightly down. How did investors react . Alex they are relatively blase about it. Its 6 of their cash reserves. The thing investors want to see is the ability to repatriate the money to the u. S. Because they want to get it in the form of dividends and buybacks. Its not the end of the world for them. Emily our Bloomberg News reporter and our Bloomberg Intelligence litigation manager. We will continue to follow these stories very closely. Coming up, our guest host for the rest of the hour, ev Williams Joins us. The cofounder of twitter are social Media Networks becoming too powerful and where does Digital Publishing go from here . Stay with us. This is bloomberg. Emily Evan Williams has made a major role in shaping how users express themselves online, from founding blogger which he sold to google, he focused on podcasting and from there, a side project that he called twitter was born. He remains on the board of directors. He started medium as a way to publish posts longer than twitters character limit. Here with me for the hour, Evan Williams. I want to start with medium because you play a tremendous role in how we publish online and express ourselves online. Medium is your vision for the future. Give us an update on where it is and where its going. Evan medium is a place to write stories and ideas. Its meant to be open to anyone and anyone who has something of something to say of substance to find their audience. Its an a on blogging or social media but it is focused on things that tend to be longer. Its used by both amateurs and professionals. Everyone from the president to individuals with stories to tell. Emily president obama, bono, Hillary Clinton you have publishers like bill simmons, what is the balance between amateurs, influencers and publishers . Evan we think the mix is important and makes the conversation better. The entire point of medium is, unlike a standalone website, you are in the mix. Your ideas bounce around with other people. You can respond and highlight and people can find you. One of our mottos is great ideas can come from anywhere. When it comes to writing, there are tons of individuals with unique perspectives and ideas and the ability to articulate them. We offer a place to do that. It is where a Business Leader can write something and a customer can respond. Because theres the diversity of voices, you get much more insight. Emily it is beautiful, simple and elegant. Where are you on monetization . Evan we are working on growing the monetization piece right now. Really making it work for individuals. Now, we are focused on enabling professionals which means getting them paid. Brands are publishing and working with the publishers to tell their stories and gain audiences to the stories. Some publishers are implementing our Subscription Program as well so you can create a pay wall. Thats looking good but its in its early stages. Emily tim kaine responded and mitt romney announced why hes not running for president on medium. How does that come about . Do you have a team of people trying to get hillary to post on medium . Whats the playbyplay . Evan we have an Outreach Team thats a White Glove Service team and they help get the ball rolling. It has taken on its own momentum. Whether you are in dc or in that world, if you want to find in an audience, medium becomes the default for that. It really has gotten this momentum now and people from that world read it. If you have something to say, you go there and say it. Emily you mentioned there is one person who has not posted on medium and that is donald trump. Evan we are happily open to what he would have to say but so far he has not chosen to expand much beyond his 140 characters in writing. Emily he has taken fine advantage of twitter. He seems to prefer expressing himself in 140 characters. What has that been like watching trump take off on twitter . Evan kind of the same as everyone. A mixture of bewilderment and fear. It has been fascinating, especially most recent revelation that his tweets were, you could distinguish his tweets from his staff by looking at the source. Years ago, when we held in that ability to see the source, we did not picture that reticular use case but im glad its there. Emily vanity fair had a provocative article that said Silicon Valley created donald trump. Do you think Silicon Valley or that without twitter, trump would be not where he is . Evan i would hate to us to take the credit or the blame for that. Its a result largely of our media ecosystem which has tremendously good and bad things. When i started working on the internet, i was excited anyone could that their voice out there and i thought the world is going to be smarter, wiser, when the truth is out there and unfettered, and the reason im still working in this area is that i realize it not as simple as that. The tremendous amount of noise has not made us or in many ways, it has made us dumber. Theyre so much we have to do on top of this system to take full advantage as a society, we still have a lot of work to do. Emily you have highprofile tech ceos saying that they are against trump. Where do you stand . Evan i am firmly against trump. Emily how do you, as someone who has built multiple platforms for free speech, how do you balance your clinical views with your responsibility to the platform . We just saw this, in the trending topic section that they deemphasized conservative stories. Evan im not unfriendly against all republicans. Im proud that both on twitter and on medium, we have vuilt plaforms that are giving an equal side. We have many senators and congresspeople and about an even mix on both sides. In fact, in our Outreach Team, we employ an equal number of people who reach out to the right and left. Theres nothing in our system that biases one side against the other. That has created a Healthy Exchange and i read and recommend viewpoints from both sides. Because they are on the same platform, i think people are more open to them. Emily bloomberg had a scoop today that donald trump wants to start a media business. Evan i think that would be very smart of them. I think there will be an audience. What do you think . Emily he seems to be getting a lot of interest. Evan maybe he could cohost. Emily Evan Williams, we will be speaking with you about the next hour. Thank you so much for joining us. Still ahead, we will continue our deep dive with my cohost looking at the future of medium and twitter. This is bloomberg. Emily a story we are watching sonos cutting a deal with amazon. Soon they will be able to control their speakers from amazon echo. A longterm Partnership Marks a major pivot for the company. Theyve maintained the tightest possible control over the software its listeners used to control their speakers. And next week the Company Received clearance to go ahead with the deal that would bring the two leading providers on data center and corporate computing acquitted together as they chase faster growth. They will close next month on the seventh. The combined company will Begin Operating under the new name dell technologies. Still to come, more of our exclusive conversation with ev williams. We will talk about how his companys shape the future of how we talk about ourselves. Check us out in the radio you can listen on the Bloomberg Radio app. This is bloomberg. A top stories this hour. Creditors rejected a Restructuring Plan saying page and haijin would need an extra 1 billion. Shares soared on news it would seem to buy some assets. Shares fell more than two months with the expansion spree showing no signs of slowing down. Executives said they wanted to buy brokerage in trust companies plus smaller rivals. Industrial production was unchanged in july, falling short of even the most pessimistic estimates. Outpost is output did not july. In tell offered reasons for more optimism. Factory production rose. Global news, 24 hours a day. This is bloomberg. Lets get the latest from the markets. Uliette juliette you can take the weaker yen or i guess the stronger dollar. You have equities up. Gain of 1 . For a the regional index set for a very solid month. Today, having a look at of s doinghyundai merchant well in korea. Is downan cost fee 0. 3 . About this Dollar Strength story, following the solid story. Mining stocks leading the losses. We have seen divergence coming through for most of the Southeast Asian markets to read china goes on its lunch break, we have seen a turnaround. The market up 0. 3 . In terms of the and of the month, pretty good for stocks and not so good for gold. The story of the strong dollar. The gold price on track for an august loss. That is the state of play across asian markets. Emily this is bloomberg west. Medium has become the place where people post longer and indepth pieces president obama, bill gates and bono are just a few of the people who have used this forum to share their thoughts with the world. The former leader of now bankrupt gawker just posted her thoughts. Stay with us. Ceo of medium and cofounder of twitter, Evan Williams. I is supposed she posted this on medium because the idea is you cant take it down. What is your take on peter thiel versus gawker . Is that going too far or fair play . Evan for gawker or peter thiel . Emily either. Evan its scary for the press. Especially if unknown sources of money are fighting you. I was not a fan of everything gawker did but in general, im a fan of freedom of the press. I think it is critical. Ultimately, gawker should avail, prevail, but it would be a bad thing if random media sites can be taken out by people who dont like what they say. Emily its a question you deal with behindthescenes what is free speech . What counts as fair . What is going too far . Im sure when you started blogger, there were trolls and Online Harassment. It seems like nothing has changed. Evan it has gotten worse, for sure. The early days of the internet, it was a little better and we felt like its a big club and if you are there, you are welcome and we have dinner parties with our front door open. If you stop by, everyone is glad to see you and so much has evolved with that default framework. The idea that anyone can join any conversation is not something we expect in the real world. Because so many wonderful things come from online, theres a lot of desire to hold onto that ability and yet it causes so much problems when you open it up to the massive society. Emily why is it hard to crack dow