The current digital trade model grants broad rights to technology and other companies to control, transmit, process and store data worldwide, while also shielding their digital systems from regulatory scrutiny. These digital provisions mirror and amplify parallel efforts by Big Tech firms to avoid regulatory oversight in the United States and countries around the world. Such as protecting data privacy, ensuring emerging technologies comply with domestic labor laws, promoting competition and more. digital trade agreements have granted broad digital corporate rights while imposing rigid restrictions on the measures governments can adopt to promote legitimate public policy interests The rapid digital transformation of the economy has emerged largely without the knowledge, consent or input of the people it most affects-the workers and consumers whose lives are increasingly governed, surveilled and commodified by the technological revolution.Īt a time when governments around the world are grappling with how to regulate emerging digital technologies, recent U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai stated in 2021, digital trade must be “grounded in how it affects our people and our workers” and provide space to “prioritize flexible policies that can adapt to changing circumstances” of rapidly evolving forms of digital commerce.1 Achieving this vision will require a more balanced approach that preserves governments’ right to fully regulate the digital economy, while also driving greater cooperation to address the very real threats to privacy, democracy and decent work. Digital apps and social media platforms have eroded personal privacy, undermined the mental health of adolescents, and provided a megaphone to hateful and anti-democratic forces that have corroded the social discourse.Īs U.S. The large technology companies collect, share, commodify and sell tremendous amounts of personal data with little or no oversight. Outside the workplace, digitalization poses other threats to workers, consumers and people. Many of these jobs are being shipped to countries where workers are paid poverty wages and face severe repression for organizing trade unions. It also facilitates the privatization of public data and data services, costing jobs and undermining the quality of publicly delivered services. The digital transformation has enabled the corporate offshoring of whole new categories of jobs, including workers in call centers, information technology, back- office and even health care through telemedicine. Platform companies such as ride-hailing and delivery services have promoted a new, exploitative model of employment where so-called “gig” workers endure low earnings, uncertain work schedules and no benefits. Technology companies and other employers are increasingly supervising, surveilling and even disciplining workers with automated artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithmic management systems that can shortchange workers’ earnings, expose workers to unsafe workplace conditions, infringe on the right to form unions and exacerbate employment discrimination. While the digital transformation has driven real gains in communications, transportation, science and beyond, it has also brought urgent challenges to the world of work and society, which democratic governments are only beginning to address. By comparison, recent digital trade texts make no reference to workers’ rights and do not require governments to take any meaningful action to protect individuals’ personal data. digital trade policy has prioritized securing increased market access and intellectual property rights for its big technology firms, with broad prohibitions against any government measures that could restrict corporations’ ability to move, process and store data as they see fit. trade policy, its “worker-centered” approach extends to digital trade and the digital economy by placing the needs of workers, consumers and society ahead of the profits and interests of big technology companies. As the Biden administration continues to remake U.S.
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