The Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) writes today to Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House and Chuck Schumer, Majority leader in the U.S. Senate to express grave concern over a provision buried in the Trade Title of the United States Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) that could be used by large U.S. tech corporations to undermine the European Union’s superior regulatory framework to protect consumers online and hold these firms accountable.
While USICA is ostensibly a bill focused on competition with China, Section 71011 would extend a program known as “Special 301” to U.S. large technology firms and apply to the entire world, including Europe. This provision would newly require the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to monitor the anti-monopoly enforcement and digital governance policies of countries around the world and target for elimination pro-consumer, pro-worker, pro-privacy and pro-competition policies and proposals. Nations that maintain such policies would be subject to U.S. government investigations and sanctions.
With consumers increasingly relying on the internet for work, shopping, and social life, it is more important than ever that the appropriate regulatory frameworks are in place to ensure their safety and privacy. It is particularly inappropriate for the U.S. to create new tools for Big Tech to attack EU digital governance laws now, just as the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC) is getting off the ground. This provision flies in the face of the goals of the TTC as well as the informal dialogue on consumer protection.
We already know that U.S. large technology firms have the European Union’s Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act and General Data Protection and Regulation legislation in their crosshairs. Establishing Special 301 powers for these corporations would create yet another tool to attack these European policies and would also contradict the Biden administration’s Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy as well as the considerable efforts in the U.S. Congress and U.S. agencies to rein in the growing power of these corporations and hold them accountable for abuses of workers, consumers, and smaller firms.
We thus urge congressional leadership and the conference committee to ensure that this problematic provision is not included in any final legislation.