Warren, Schakowsky Lead 10 Lawmakers Commending Biden Administration for Countering Big Tech Influence in Trade Negotiations
Letter
Dear President Biden,
We strongly support your whole-of-government competition policy agenda and your 2023 State
of the Union commitment to protect all Americans' privacy, our children's wellbeing, and
smaller businesses' opportunities by countering Big Tech abuses. Opinion research shows that
these goals also are strongly supported by a broad majority of Americans united across partisan
and regional lines.
We are writing today to express our appreciation for your efforts to try to ensure that any "digital
trade" provisions of an Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) are consistent with these
goals.
Congress and administration agencies focused on digital governance are working to promote
competition, safeguard Americans' privacy and civil rights and liberties and develop policies to
prevent harms related to artificial intelligence (AI). But some Big Tech interests seek to use their
lobbyists and money to hijack IPEF negotiations to impose binding rules branded as "digital
trade" that may derail such government action. This form of international preemption could
thwart domestic policies that address problems for workers, consumers, competing businesses,
and democracy itself caused by an unregulated digital sphere shaped by dominant platforms.
We thank you for suspending negotiations on aspects of the IPEF digital text that can be used to
frustrate privacy, AI, civil rights and liberties, anti-monopoly, gig worker and other digital
safeguards that Congress and the administration seek. This includes terms covering personal
data, which could derail policies to protect consumer privacy and our kids online and to secure
data related to infrastructure and other sensitive sectors. Another rightly suspended provision
could be construed as branding competition policies that apply equally to domestic and foreign
firms as "illegal trade barriers" if they have a greater impact on some U.S. firms simply because
these firms are large, not because they are American. This provision would undermine most tech
anti-monopoly policies.
We also thank you for recognizing the importance of excluding dangerous digital terms from
IPEF that industry pushed the Trump administration to include in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada
Agreement (USMCA). This includes rules that can be read as providing new secrecy guarantees
to tech firms that restrict governments from obtaining information on algorithms to
systematically enforce against self-preferencing and other competition policy threats and wage
and hour and other labor violations done via "bossware" programs. This term could also
potentially forbid pre-screening of source code and even algorithms, including those used in
artificial intelligence applications, for racial bias and other violations of civil liberties and rights,
as the administration's AI Bill of Rights proposes, and gut the right-to-repair laws being enacted
in states nationwide and that the administration and many in Congress seek to enact nationally.
We applaud the recent withdrawal of the United States' support for similar harmful digital
language with respect to the WTO-linked E-Commerce Joint Statement Initiative (JSI).1 This is
an important step to protect the space Congress and regulators need to develop our domestic tech
policies -- but we must go further. We urge you to now secure our shared competition and tech
regulatory goals by replacing the problematic "digital trade" provisions with new language that
ensures U.S. regulatory agencies and Congress can counter Big Tech abuses. Reconceiving
IPEF's digital provisions is critical because the pact, if completed, will set binding rules for 40%
of the global economy. We also urge you to develop a new model for digital rules in trade pacts
that protect workers, consumers and smaller business, and to use these terms to update the U.S.
approach in the WTO JSI and any future trade talks, including with Taiwan and Kenya, in which
digital terms are contemplated.
We are heartened to learn that administration agencies responsible for enforcement of privacy
and competition policies have been engaged on digital trade policy based on the balanced
approach USTR Katherine Tai enumerated previously2 in a speech on digital trade and again in
a recent speech3 that emphasized the importance of consistency between administration trade and
competition policies. It is critical that fixes to the IPEF digital provisions safeguard the policy
space we need to effectively regulate Big Tech. We are keen to see USTR continue to work
collaboratively with the antitrust agencies on digital trade terms that might be contemplated for
any future pacts. Indeed, it is critical that new terms are developed and used consistently across
agreements and that our allies are informed that this is the new U.S. digital trade policy.
Additionally, we were particularly glad to see Ambassador Tai's appointment to the White
House Competition Council, which coordinates administration-wide policy on competition in
accordance with President Biden's "Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American
Economy." Ambassador Tai's appointment signals the administration's recognition that
President Biden's domestic competition agenda must extend to trade policy as well. The U.S.'s
trade agreements cannot impede, and should in fact promote, fair competition in the global
economy.
On behalf of the American people, we thank the Biden administration for acting to protect the
interest of American workers, consumers and small businesses. Over and over, we have seen the
1 "U.S. to end support for WTO e-commerce proposals, wants "policy space' for digital trade rethink", Inside U.S. Trade, October 24, 2023, https://insidetrade.com/daily-news/us-end-support-wto-e-commerce-proposals-wantspolicy-space-digital-trade-rethink (October 25, 2023)
2 "Remarks of Ambassador Katherine Tai on Digital Trade at the Georgetown University Law Center Virtual Conference", November 2021, https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/speeches-and-remarks/2021/november/remarks-ambassador-katherine-tai-digital-trade-georgetown-university-law-center-virtual-conference (October 5, 2023)
3 "U.S. Trade Representative on Trade Policy and the Economy", C-SPAN, June 15, 2023,
https://www.c-span.org/video/?528771-2/us-trade-representative-trade-policy-economy (October 5, 2023)
damage wrought when Big Tech companies and their corporate allies are able to shape U.S. trade
policy against the interests of most Americans.
We look forward to working with you to fix the IPEF digital rules and create a new model that
can be deployed for all U.S. negotiations to ensure your administration's smart competition and
tech policies are reinforced, not undermined, in trade agreements.
Sincerely,
Source