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**OCTOBER 25, 2023**

On the Prospect website

* David Dayen: Andy Kim's challenge to Bob Menendez

* Ryan Cooper: Trump's plan to destroy NATO

* Suzanne Gordon & Steve Early: More outsourcing at the VA

Kuttner on TAP

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**** Big Tech Loses One

But trench warfare over U.S. trade policy continues.

The giant tech monopolies, which keep trying to use trade law to defend
their anti--competitive behavior and invasions of consumer privacy, lost
a round this week. At a major trade negotiation session at the World
Trade Organization in Geneva today, a senior U.S. official announced
that the U.S. was withdrawing its own proposal undercutting national
regulation of data flows, source codes, and antidiscrimination.

Those provisions were drafted by Big Tech and proposed as an official
U.S. position by the Trump administration, in order to undermine
national efforts to regulate tech by treating them as unfair trade
practices. It took until now, in year three of the Biden administration,
for the U.S. to withdraw these Trump proposals because there is still
fierce infighting among Democrats over whether to block the use of trade
law to undermine regulation of digital abuses.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is close to the industry, and Sen. Ron
Wyden, chair of the Finance Committee, is a big ally of tech and loses
few opportunities to promote the antiregulation agenda of the platform
monopolies. Though today's action was a setback for Big Tech, such is
the contention among Democrats that it was only provisional.

According to the official statement, the U.S. has not killed these
proposals outright. Rather, the "internal consultations on the U.S.
approach" are proceeding and "as these consultations proceed, we have
had to take a pause on active engagement in these small group
discussions."

So it's not over until it's over, and this can be read as an
invitation for Big Tech to double down on its lobbying. One can only
imagine the internal jockeying that led to this muddled policy and
compromise language.

So the tech trench warfare continues. Meanwhile, a coalition of
progressive groups are using the occasion of next week's Americas
Summit to press the Biden administration to get rid of all remnants of
investor-state dispute settlement provisions
in trade deals
in the Western Hemisphere. ISDS was another industry invention to enable
giant corporations to end-run national health, safety, environmental,
and labor regulation in the name of free trade.

This will also be the subject of a massive lobbying campaign and
infighting among Democrats, who of course receive a lot of corporate
money.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

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Andy Kim Takes the Leap

The three-term New Jersey Democrat explains to the Prospect why he
decided to challenge indicted Sen. Robert Menendez. BY DAVID DAYEN

Trump's Plan to Destroy NATO Would Spark Untold Chaos

If America reneges on its treaty commitments, the result will be mass
rearmament and likely nuclear proliferation. BY RYAN COOPER

'$23 Billion Up for Grabs'

Joe Biden's embrace of VA outsourcing just got worse. BY SUZANNE
GORDON & STEVE EARLY

 

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