International preemption by “trade” agreement : Big Tech’s ploy to undermine privacy, AI accountability, and anti-monopoly policies
Rethink Trade | March 2023
International preemption by “trade” agreement : Big Tech’s ploy to undermine privacy, AI accountability, and anti-monopoly policies
by Daniel Rangel, Lori Wallach
Nearly every aspect of Americans’ lives are affected by the digital realm. The 117th Congress
featured an unprecedented array of bills aimed at mitigating harms to workers, consumers,
and smaller firms from the Big Tech giants that now dominate global retail, advertising,
transportation, and other sectors. This included initiatives to protect privacy, limit online
commercial surveillance, counter exploitation of personal data by digital firms or malign
governments, ensure that artificial intelligence (AI) systems do not mask discrimination or
deliver inaccurate outcomes, and break monopolistic abuses. Most of these proposals did
not become law thanks to Big Tech lobbying. But public support for regulating the digital
economy is only growing : Many of the bills will be reintroduced in the new Congress.
One powerful, if stealthy, strategy Big Tech is prioritizing to derail regulatory efforts
here and around the world is a form of international preemption. The goal is to lock the
United States and other countries into binding international rules that forbid digital
governance initiatives. This would effectively excavate the policy space out from under
Congress and the administration. Big Tech giants have spent billions on lobbyists and
PR to brand these rules as “digital trade.” Their strategy is to use arcane, secretive trade
negotiations to limit, if not outright ban, governments from enacting or enforcing domestic
policies to counter Big Tech privacy abuses, online surveillance and discrimination, labor
violations, monopolistic misconduct and other threats that threaten our economy and
democracy.
Read the report (pdf)
