Kuttner on TAP: Will Big Tech Take Over Trade Policy?

President-elect Biden is vectoring in on a choice for the critically important post of U.S. trade representative, and there are a lot of moving parts. A major player is Big Tech, since the next crucial round of trade negotiations will be all about e-commerce.

Will Amazon, Google, and Facebook, the most powerful global corporations in the history of the world, continue to have their way with us, using trade law as a means of constraining domestic regulation? Or will the U.S. and the EU join forces to add some rules on privacy, transparency, competition, and some liability for abuses?

The issue here is not just who is named to head USTR, but the key jobs just below the top one. Trade law is so intricate and specialized that the deep state and its corporate allies can frustrate nominal policy.

A disturbing harbinger, according to our sources, is that two top trade lobbyists for Amazon, who used to hold senior posts at USTR, are primed to go back in. David Roth, who was a senior policy adviser at USTR, is now director of international public policy at Amazon. And Arrow Augerot, who was deputy assistant USTR for congressional affairs, is now a director for Americas public policy at Amazon and a registered lobbyist.

If people like these populate key negotiator slots, they will undermine even a relatively progressive USTR chief.

The leading candidate to get that job, as we’ve reported, is Katherine Tai, the chief trade staffer for the House Ways and Means Committee. Tai is fairly progressive on key trade issues.

She has the strong backing of Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and progressive trade activists support her. Tai played a key role in improving the recent U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal (USMCA), and is a relative hard-liner on China.

But there’s a catch. Big Tech, other corporate interests, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee and on trade and tech issues, are promoting Wyden’s top trade staffer, Jayme White, to be deputy USTR.

Though Wyden is a liberal on other issues, on trade he has been a complete ally of Big Tech. Wyden was a principal author of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives tech platform companies blanket immunity over content that is defamatory, fake, or incendiary.

(Trump, hoping to punish tech companies, which he views as in bed with Democrats, has been trying to repeal Sec. 230. With the possible exception of Trump’s China tariffs, this might be the only good Trump action in four years. And even here it’s a dubious effort, as Trump negotiated and signed the USMCA, which includes Sec. 230–style language.)

A Tai-White regime at USTR would follow an unfortunate pattern of appointing relative progressives for top jobs, and then giving the corporate crowd keys to the machinery. And when it comes to trade, the devil is in the details. For more, please click here.