Nigel Cory

Europe’s statements about working with the United States (and other likeminded countries) on the technical standards involved in new and emerging technologies don’t match its actions, which seek to exclude experts from foreign firms that have for years played a constructive role in European standards setting. This nationalist turn thereby paves the...

A decade ago, Congress considered legislation known as the Stop Online Piracy Act (in the House) and the Protect IP Act (in the Senate)—or “SOPA/PIPA”—that would have allowed rightsholders to seek a court order requiring Internet service providers (ISPs) to block the domain names of foreign infringing sites. The legislation would have also required...

Responding to a Commerce Department inquiry into the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), ITIF provided recommendations on global data flows, privacy, and governance; innovation and advanced manufacturing; standards-setting for data, cybersecurity, AI, cloud services, and other new and emerging technologies; the potential for an IPEF climate-cha...

While U.S. trade policy has long been contentious, until recently, the orthodox view was that it should prioritize U.S. consumer interests. But the significant decline of U.S. manufacturing jobs and output due to unbalanced trade (and weak U.S. competitiveness) has provided an opening to rethink this policy. Because of this and other factors, Presi...

The United States can be a rule maker or a rule taker on digital economic and trade policy in the Asia-Pacific, which is perhaps the most consequential and dynamic region for U.S. economic, security, and political interests. While the United States has been largely absent from genuine trade and economic engagement in the Asia-Pacific in recent year...

The United States Trade Representative (USTR) has published the Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy (Notorious Markets List, or NML), an annual report designed to highlight foreign markets that have facilitated the sale of counterfeit and pirated goods since 2006.1 The goal of the NML is to motivate foreign governments to enac...

Much has changed since CompuServe introduced its “Electronic Mall” as the first major retail e-commerce platform in 1984. Digital technologies have driven down costs and improved access and opportunities for producers and consumers, manufacturers and farmers, and above all, users. Digital technologies have transformed how a large part of the global...

Data governance and the management of global digital data flows pose immense challenges for global governance. International digital data agreements must be embedded in revisions of the global “rules based” order that emerged out of Bretton Woods in the aftermath of World War II to manage global economic issues. In that spirit, the countries that v...

Data will flow across borders unless governments enact restrictions. While some countries allow data to flow easily around the world—recognizing that legal protections can accompany the data—many more have enacted new barriers to data transfers that make it more expensive and time-consuming, if not illegal, to transfer data overseas. The spread of...

High-speed rail is a technology-driven sector that has taken decades for the leading Japanese and European firms, and the broader ecosystem of component suppliers in the United States and elsewhere, to master. Yet, over the previous 20 years, China used mercantilist policies to rapidly and unfairly close the gap. For example, it used the developmen...

The U.S. cloud service sector leads the world as it is the most innovative, investing tens of billions of dollars in research and development annually, which leads to thousands of new patents. However, the U.S. cloud sector’s leading position depends upon fair market access to global markets to earn the revenues to drive further R&D. This testimony...

Cross-border data transfers—involving both personal and nonpersonal data—enable firms of all sectors and sizes to engage in transatlantic commerce. Government agencies also need firms to be able to transfer data across borders as part of financial oversight, drug approval, law enforcement, counterterrorism, and other responsibilities. This report d...

Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) are a critical, but increasingly threatened, legal tool that many firms use to manage the transatlantic transfers of personal data that drive trade and innovation in the United States and the European Union (EU). SCCs have become even more important since the European Court of Justice (ECJ) invalidated another ke...

More than 5,000 mainly small and medium-sized firms around the United States and Europe face significant costs as a consequence of the European Court of Justice decision last summer to invalidate the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield. Transatlantic trade and innovation will suffer unless policymakers replace the Privacy Shield with a new legal framework outli...

The U.S. lead in the digital economy is under threat as a growing number of countries enact overly restrictive and discriminatory laws and regulations around digital content they identify as illegal in ways that becomes barriers to trade. Explicit content review processes are the most visible aspect, but it also includes content distribution, Inter...

Digital health—the use of information and communications technology (ICT) to provide and improve health services—holds transformational potential for health care around the world. Many digital health products are already proven, readily available, and adaptable to all kinds of countries. Digital health can help low and middle-income countries (LMIC...

More governments and firms around the world are embracing electronic invoicing (EI) to support traditional and digital trade, and to improve tax, business, and trade services. However, as more countries create their own EI frameworks, there’s a potential they could enact country-specific technical standards that act as a barrier to digital trade. B...

Voluntary agreements between copyright holders and payment processors, advertising networks, domain name registrars, search engines, and others can complement legislative and other efforts to protect creators’ digital intellectual property (IP) from the significant negative impact of piracy. Experience from the United States, Europe, and elsewhere...

Digital trade flows—which were practically nonexistent just 15 years ago—now play a central role in global trade and commerce.1 Yet efforts to better assess the extent and value of data flows, and the impact of government restrictions on them, are frustratingly few and far between. A survey from Japan on the impact of China’s cybersecurity law (CSL...

China’s systematic “innovation mercantilism” is a threat not only to the world’s major economies—particularly to the European Union, Japan, and the United States—but also to the very soul of the global trading system. Yet while China has imposed its corrosive and harmful economic and trade policies on the world unilaterally, it would be impossible...

Just as there was a set of institutions, agreements, and principles that emerged out of Bretton Woods in the aftermath of World War II to manage global economic issues, the countries that value the role of an open, competitive, and rules-based global digital economy need to come together to enact new global rules and norms to manage a key driver of...

The global economy, including developed and developing nations alike, is becoming more innovation-driven—powered by knowledge, creativity, and technology, each of which is fundamentally supported by intellectual property (IP) and intellectual property rights (IPR) protections. And yet, over the past two decades, the policy debate over IP’s role has...

As they continue to compete in advanced technology industries, many countries are doubling down on digital protectionism and innovation mercantilism. While these forms of protectionism typically rely on behind-the-border regulations rather than tariffs to protect local firms, the objective and impact remain the same—either to replace foreign goods...

Success in the digital economy depends in large part on scale. Digital innovators that have access to larger markets usually do better than competitors with access to smaller markets. Because there is no single, integrated Latin American market, Latin American digital innovators compete with a considerable disadvantage, especially compared with U.S...

As information and communication technology (ICT) products get smaller, manufacturers face the challenge of fitting multiple small labels on their products to show a range of regulators and consumers that these products conform to regulations. This can lead to jumbled collections of barely legible labels that convey little or no information. Allowi...

Data is the lifeblood of the modern global economy. Digital trade and cross-border data flows are expected to continue to grow faster than the overall rate of global trade. Businesses use data to create value, and many can only maximize that value when data can flow freely across borders, yet a growing number of countries are enacting barriers that...

Many countries ask domestic Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to websites engaged in illegal activities—such as those facilitating cybercrime, child pornography, or terrorism—because this is one of the few means available to respond to illegal materials hosted abroad. However, when it comes to addressing other legitimate public poli...

Liberalization of trade in services has long taken a backseat to trade in goods, despite the fact that services account for around 70 percent of the global economy. While not all services are tradable, technological innovation has allowed more services to be traded by small and large firms alike. However, barriers to service trade are most clearly...

In today’s economy, data is to global trade what manufactured goods were in the post-War Bretton Woods system—its lifeblood. However, the datadriven economy is under increasing threat as countries impose a slew of nontariff trade barriers that limit the flow of data across borders. Some of these measures stem from privacy and security concerns, but...