Today, Ed Gresser, Vice President & Director for Trade and Global Markets at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released the following statement in response to the Biden administration’s decision yesterday to withdraw support for critical U.S. digital trade policy proposals at the World Trade Organization (WTO):
“It is deeply troubling to hear that the U.S. is removing its support for WTO digital trade policymaking on issues ranging from cross-border data flows to localization requirements, source code protection, and non-discriminatory treatment of digital products. These policies are sound in principle and proven in practice through such agreements as the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement or USMCA. Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden is right to term the U.S. decision as “leaving a vacuum” that others — including authoritarian governments interested in surveillance, data-mining, and censorship — will quickly seek to fill. We share his concern over this decision, and that other technology policy leaders such as Reps. Suzan DelBene and Darin LaHood have expressed.
“We see no evidence that the U.S.’ historic advocacy of free flows of digital data subject to non-discriminatory public-interest regulation, or opposition to the financially and environmentally costly forced localization of servers and other technology, has conflicted in any way with public-interest legislation in the U.S. or elsewhere, or with regulation to protect privacy and security. Rather, we are concerned that a new U.S. passivity on these matters will embolden other governments unhappy with America’s centrality to digital technological development and trade commerce, and lead to the spread of regulatory and antitrust policies aimed differentially at American firms, and in others through de facto legitimation of national firewalling, state surveillance, and censorship.
“The administration, before proceeding further, should step back and return to first principles. In very practical terms, an open internet is indispensable to the well-being of consumers everywhere; to U.S. leadership in IT research, innovation, and technology; and to the jobs and growth underpinned by the U.S.’ world-leading $720 billion in exports of ICT and digitally enabled services. And more conceptually, an open internet is essential to a world economy in which liberty and free flows of information support growth and development, while impartial public-interest regulation targets abusive behavior and protects Internet users. We urge the administration to reflect carefully on the risks a U.S. withdrawal from core e-commerce and digital trade policy development poses to these interests and values, and to reconsider.”
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C., with offices in Brussels, Berlin and the United Kingdom. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org
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Media Contact: Amelia Fox, afox@ppionline.org
