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A series of foreign governments have climbed down on digital regulations, taxes, and other restrictions in the year since Donald Trump returned to office. When Big Tech cozied up to Trump, it found its most powerful lobbyist, someone eager to bully countries into submission. And now, industry leaders are asking for even more.
In an analysis shared exclusively with the Prospect, Public Citizen has mapped Big Tech lobbyist demands in public comments for the National Trade Estimate, an annual report that lists alleged “non-tariff trade barriers” from other countries. This report is an annual lobbyist free-for-all, a way for them to get on the government radar laws in other countries that they would like to see eliminated. The trade groups are now objecting to hundreds of laws in close to 65 different jurisdictions around the world, a significant escalation in demands over the previous year.
“The broad idea is to deregulate the tech ecosystem as much as possible, to match the U.S. deregulatory state in other countries,” said Rishab Bailey, research director with the Digital Trade Alliance (DTA), a coalition that investigates the tech industry’s role in global trade. Bailey worked on the original research.
Melinda St. Louis, of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, noted that the Trump administration is exhibiting the same kind of behavior abroad on behalf of Big Tech as they are at home, where the president recently issued an executive order to attempt to preempt state regulations on artificial intelligence. “He has really followed through for Big Tech from what we’ve seen,” St. Louis said. While many of the bilateral trade agreements Trump has made with foreign countries in the mad rush to replace tariffs have been kept secret, what we do know is that a number of tax and regulatory policies around the world are being watered down or excised at the request of the U.S. |
