The Tech Lobbying Is Coming From Inside The House

I recently wrote about how leading tech lobbyists have redefined the concept of "digital trade" and used it for their own purposes, to protect the viability of their companies and prevent countries that have signed trade agreements from legislation to protect others from using things. such as privacy or the rule of law.

Just in time, the office of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) released a report last week showing the continued power of big tech in trade deals, following exactly the usual pattern. The report also reveals how US Trade Representative (USTR) chief official Katherine Tai, who is widely seen as an advocate of a progressive trade agenda that breaks with the past, is recognizing them, at least in the digital economy. .

The report is primarily about a set of emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the progressive coalition Seek Progress. The emails can be seen as former USTR and Commerce Department officials, who now work for tech companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook, hold meetings with current executives and discuss trade deals that are being actively negotiated. .

This is exactly the dynamic sociology Wendy Li described in a recent research paper, in which she details the cognitive capture that big technology has achieved largely through meetings, discussions, and ongoing social conversations. This constant contact has enabled lobbyists to penetrate the minds of public officials and adopt their beliefs as official policy. In fact, Warren's article specifically mentions Li's work.

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The interesting thing here is who Big Tech is targeting to start this work. They mainly employ Tai's key employees and assistants. Although Tai has spoken to lobbyists from Amazon and Google itself, she certainly feels pressure from below for those exchanges. This poses a problem for Tai, who has an agenda that doesn't align with the company's wishes, but a leadership team in his office that is more aligned.

That's important now as USTR and the government negotiate the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), which Warren and other congressional Democrats have previously criticized for a chapter on digital trade that limits the government's ability to set national policy in technological platforms. .

The report does a good job of showing the wave of hiring of former big tech executives who are well-placed to influence policy. Two officials who served as USTR deputies, Michael Punke (who also served as US ambassador to the World Trade Organization) and Arrow Augerot, work for Amazon, along with former USTR policy adviser David Roth. (Punke and Augerot appear many times in the email.)

Augerot and Roth were indeed considered top USTR deputies, as was Behnaz Kibria, Google's senior policy adviser, who is also well represented in the email. Such open cooperation with Big Tech was not possible, so these alternative positions went to Jayme White, who came out of the office of Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Sarah Bianchi, a former investment manager at BlackRock. and an Airbnb lobbyist who had little experience in trade policy before going to the USTR (it was largely the landing point for an Obama suspension).

It's not hard to see the outlines of a deal here in which the progressives would get official cabinet office and the business wing would get MPs. Sources have told Prospect in the past that Bianchi and White are not Tai's favorites.

Senator Elizabeth Warren's report shows the continued power of big tech in trade deals.

Moreover, as Li indicated in his article, professional USTR officials have come to understand how Big Tech views digital trade policy: that any regulation that hinders technology platforms is an illegal barrier to trade, and that countries should not restrict the use of personal data. given data. or impose legal liability on digital platforms.

So the 128 pages of internal emails mostly show communications between career USTR employees or senior lawmakers like Bianchi and White and these revolving door tech lobbyists dating back to the early months of the Biden administration. The frequency of communication and meetings suggests that the government and these lobbyists are something of a team, working together on a digital trade policy they all support.

Contact is not made only on one side. While tech lobbyists are obviously seeking meetings, holding conferences, capturing voices and information, and simply trying to reach key decision makers, communication often starts on the government side. Whenever there are changes in trade policy, government officials turn to representatives of these giant corporations for advice and guidance.

There is an "immediate opportunity to communicate with Mexico about the fintech measure, so we wanted to see if you could all be updated since the measure was completed," USTR Director Sarah Ellerman wrote to Kibria, a Google, in March 2021 - Representative. Leah Liston, another USTR director, is asking Amazon's Ari Giovenco if his team has "information" about an upcoming meeting with Mexican officials in June 2021. Earlier this month, USTR's Kenneth Schagrin asked Bullock for an update on "Amazon's consultations with the Saudis". "." "

As close as these talks are, they usually don't end there: a meeting between Amazon's Tai and Punke was scheduled to discuss Punke's time as a WTO ambassador and "how he approached the job." are subject to Mexico's "de minimis" standard, extensive cross-border controls and tax breaks on goods up to a certain value, which Amazon has abused to smuggle millions of packages duty-free into the United States every day.

There are many compliments and offers of support. But finally we get to the heart of things. Google's Karan Bhatia wrote to Tai on August 5, 2021 to complain about a proposed law in South Korea that would prevent traditional app stores from generally forcing developers to pay access fees. Bhatia says this would "lead to a ban on American business models and a preference for local vendors," though it would also have implications for the distribution of Korean apps. Bhatia simply asks Tai to convey his concerns to Korean officials. Tai replies that the issue is "on my radar" and he will provide updates in the future. Another email relates to a discussion between Augerot and White about "DMA," an acronym for the Digital Markets Act, an EU regulation on the market power of technology platforms that the industry has been trying to get rid of.

IPEF is explicitly mentioned in several communications between lobbyists and whites. This is direct trading where the current chapter of digital trading largely reflects the industry's course to remove all "trade barriers" for digital platforms. In one instance, in the emails, a senior Bianchi employee writes to Google's Behnaz Kibria to "talk to experts like you" about IPEF and "further discuss the digital element of the strategy."

White and Bianchi are the most senior people at USTR, other than Ambassador Tai, who will always listen to industry as well. When the advice Tai gets from his employees and management mirrors what he hears from American companies, it's hard to trust the politicians. When the industry gets its policy information directly from careers staff, you can make informed suggestions about your chosen position. This makes it much more likely that Tai's perspective will also be reflected in politics.

This is where Tai stands. It tries to reinvent the trade itself, has formal advisory boards of industry representatives, career staff who have long joined lobbyists' arguments on digital trade, a legacy of "existing, enforceable agreements that shape the industry, and a number of top-level parliamentarians high". who also seem quite receptive to the charms of big technology.

Senator Warren makes a number of recommendations in the report, including more transparency for industry meetings and better protections for the revolving door (which would require legislation that will not be implemented in Congress). But Warren's biggest recommendation is that the USTR should simply "reject the big tech agenda." The problem is that it's hard to separate Big Tech's agenda from USTR's. Exactly.

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