U.S. trade negotiators have long understood that to expand market access for American goods and services, they must address at least two types of policy barriers. First, there are overt barriers to trade, such as tariffs. Second, foreign governments also enact covert barriers to trade, known in the professional vernacular as “non-tariff barriers” (NTBs), which are not officially trade policies, but they nonetheless tilt the playing field to protect a country’s domestic industries by raising the cost of doing business for U.S. companies and other foreign competitors.
But in recent years, a third type of barrier has emerged. As Hilal Aka writes in The National Interest, these policies are not benign NTBs that apply equally to all companies, but instead, policies specifically tailored to inhibit or take down a single class of companies: US big tech firms. Call them “non-tariff attacks” (NTAs). Examples of these policies include antitrust regulations, content-moderation requirements, data-localization mandates, digital service taxes, and exorbitant fines. The EU’s Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, and similar laws in Brazil, India, and Japan, are examples. In the last five years, they have spread to dozens of countries around the world. US trade negotiators should take note and push back.
Read the commentary in The National Interest.
