Last month, former European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton and four other officials with European nongovernmental organizations were barred from entering the U.S., in what was described as retaliation for “censorship” of U.S. tech platforms in Europe. In reality, it was the latest in a campaign to force the EU to withdraw two regulatory laws, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, that U.S. tech firms don’t like. The laws require tech companies to take down illegal content on their platforms, restrict the transfer of user data to multiple platforms run by the same companies, refrain from “steering” users toward their own products, and allow for fair competition in app stores and interoperable social media sites.
The travel ban was only the latest in the Trump administration’s special pleading for Big Tech, using threatened tariffs and leverage in trade deals to try to force changes to the EU’s sovereign laws. European leaders cried foul, claiming that the travel ban was an act of intimidation attempting to damage the EU’s regulatory autonomy.
But within weeks, the intimidation appeared to have worked. A new European Commission rule called the Digital Networks Act, which will regulate telecom infrastructure, will subject U.S. tech firms to “a voluntary framework rather than binding rules,” according to Reuters. Add to that the EU’s plans to overhaul its signature digital rules in a more tech-friendly direction, and largely stop artificial intelligence regulation. All in all, Brussels is stepping back on tech regulation, under intense pressure from the U.S.
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, through investigations or tariff threats or in this case travel bans, to allow the industry to operate more freely abroad. And now, industry leaders are asking for even more.
The special pleading abroad on behalf of industry to change sovereign laws by force is a relic of the era of neoliberal dominance.
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 Melanie Foley, deputy director for Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
Melinda St. Louis, director of 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.
For all of the talk about Trump ushering in a new era of global trade, the special pleading abroad on behalf of industry to change sovereign laws by force is a relic of the era of neoliberal dominance. Trade agreements were frequently wish lists for the powerful, and trade officials handmaidens to those industry asks. And Trump is recapitulating that in his own way, bulldozing other countries’ laws to make his Big Tech pals happy.
“On the one hand, he is blowing up the order, the multilateral trading system as it was conceived,” St. Louis said. “But he’s doing so to push the exact same agenda for U.S. Big Tech companies.”
“NON-TARIFF TRADE BARRIERS” is kind of a made-up term that businesses use to characterize any law or regulation that they would prefer not to follow. These barriers were waved around by Trump on Liberation Day last April, as proof that he had to impose tariffs to preserve fairness in international trade. But really the goal is to deregulate and cut taxes in foreign countries to preference domestic industries, in this case Big Tech.
The strategy has yielded a lot of success. In October, reciprocal trade deals with Malaysia and Cambodia were announced, where the digital chapters did not include broad exemptions that would allow for future regulations on the tech industry. These exemptions were once typical to give sovereign nations some regulatory flexibility. Recent so-called “framework” agreements, with El Salvador, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Argentina, which reflect the parameters of deals still being negotiated, also do not contain these exemptions.
Last June, Canada rescinded a digital services tax that would have imposed a 3 percent levy on revenue earned from online activities in the country by the biggest tech firms. “Rescinding the digital services tax will allow the negotiations of a new economic and security relationship with the United States to make vital progress,” said Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne at the time. But that progress has yet to occur, though the digital services tax remains rescinded.
Similarly, India gave up on a 6 percent “equalization levy” on online advertisements.
Indonesia’s bilateral deal with the U.S. states that there is “adequate” enough data protection in America to enable cross-border transfer of Indonesian data, a key ask from the tech industry. The U.K. inked a “Tech Prosperity Deal” with the U.S. that promises investment from Big Tech firms in Britain, but while the U.K.’s technology secretary denied that the deal included the elimination of a tax on Big Tech and a copyright restriction for AI companies, specifics have been hard to unearth.
In November, South Korea and the U.S. issued a joint statement maintaining commitments that U.S. companies “are not discriminated against and do not face unnecessary barriers in terms of laws and policies concerning digital services.” The statement outlined several of those types of laws, including “cross-border transfer of data,” “network usage fees,” and “online platform regulations.” Similar language appeared in a U.S.-EU joint statement in August, vowing to prevent “unjustified digital trade barriers” and saying that the EU will not adopt any network usage fees.
The appropriations bill that passed the House last week specifically asks U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer for a briefing on efforts to “counteract” tech platform regulation under consideration in South Korea that Big Tech has argued against. The regulation is largely about preventing deepfakes. Undersecretary of State Sarah Rogers tweeted on December 30 that the proposed bill in South Korea amounts to censorship and “endangers tech cooperation.”
In December, the U.S. proposed a permanent moratorium on customs duties on “electronic transmissions,” another critical ask from Big Tech that would allow for free movement of e-commerce goods. The moratorium could also include services, which would extend to all sorts of transactions by the likes of Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, and others.
These changes may not be that enforceable, noted Beth Baltzan, a former adviser to Biden U.S. trade representative Katherine Tai. Indeed, the first two countries to ban Grok AI for facilitating sexualized deepfakes by its users were Indonesia and Malaysia, two countries with signed tech-friendly deals with the U.S. and which saw domestic pushback to potentially giving up their regulatory prerogatives.
But the digital trade language, once installed in bilateral deals, has a tendency to stick, restricting the ability for countries to engage in their own regulatory maneuvers. Plus, having seen the lengths to which the administration will go to target laws they don’t like, Big Tech is doubling down.
PUBLIC CITIZEN LOOKED AT PUBLIC COMMENTS to the U.S. trade representative from 12 different Big Tech–aligned trade groups. Their complaints take aim at the national laws of 64 countries, from Argentina to Zimbabwe.
These include anti-monopoly and competition regulation around the world, with the claim that such laws discriminate against U.S. companies. They include laws that require AI companies to disclose source code to regulators and other laws aimed at ensuring the safety of AI. They include restrictions on cross-border data transfers. They include privacy protections on the processing, storage, and export of personal data. They include regulations on electronic payments for secure transactions. They include laws that demand Big Tech companies share revenues with domestic industries like journalism that have been hobbled by platform domination over news distribution. They include digital services taxes like the one Canada was set to impose. They include production laws requiring tech firms to use domestically manufactured equipment. And they include cloud computing regulations, including licensing requirements and restrictions on data transfer.
The full list of regulatory demands is available here. Many involve nominal allies of the U.S. like Japan, South Korea, the EU, and Australia.
“Some of these are being challenged before they are on the statute books,” said Foley, pointing to several proposed laws and regulations. “The line appears to be ‘These are our companies, and nobody has the right to decide how to regulate them.’”
Jamieson Greer said that directly in an interview with the Atlantic Council in December. “I don’t purport to controlling any other countries’ regulatory schemes or their sovereignty or anything like that, I understand that,” Greer said. “But with respect to our companies, we’re going to regulate our companies … We’re not going to allow that regulation to be outsourced.”
The decisions of other countries on how they want to regulate or tax entities in their countries and impacting their citizens is apparently immaterial to this framework.
“The Trump administration is far more willing to openly act as gangsters,” Foley said. “It’s far more willing to use non-trade tools to put pressure on countries.” Big Tech is the main beneficiary of this intimidation campaign.
The theory behind the Trump trade regime was to create American jobs. But St. Louis pointed out that demanding deregulation abroad for Big Tech has nothing to do with that and could in fact harm that initiative. “We could see much more offshoring of tech service jobs if there is less regulation around the world,” she said. “There’s been a total bait and switch in terms of what they’re claiming they’re doing.”