Technological innovation has had a profound impact on the way we live, communicate, and work. The dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution has opened immense opportunities but also created significant challenges. Questions about cybersecurity, disinformation, and privacy, for example, vex businesses, governments, and private citizens alike. A different set of issues are related to the sheer size, reach, and power of the companies that comprise Big Tech and how to deal with them.

Being a large corporation, and being in the vanguard of a far-reaching and ever-expanding industry, is, by itself, neither good nor bad, but it will often lead to increased scrutiny. In some instances, this might result in attempts to either block certain companies from entering a market, or, alternatively, make it more difficult for them to operate in it. In 2015, for example, President Obama alluded to this when he accused the European Union of digital protectionism in its investigations of American tech companies— “[i]n defense of Google and Facebook, sometimes the European response … is more commercially driven than anything else.” But to chalk scrutiny of large tech companies and their business practices up to mere protectionism would miss the mark. The many benefits of modern technology notwithstanding, there are powerful economic factors within digital markets that limit competition and stifle innovation, and as a result can hurt consumers.

Concerns about Big Tech are also not confined to Europe. In fact, there seems to be a growing consensus in both the United States and the European Union of the need to, at a minimum, explore ways to check certain actions and the broader influence of the largest tech companies.

To be sure, there are differences in how Big Tech is viewed in the United States and Europe. At a basic level, many Europeans are viscerally suspicious of the market and the power of big corporations. This clearly also applies to the tech sector, as evidenced by a poll conducted in the run-up to the European Parliament elections last year. Fully 64 percent of voters thought that the European Union had been too lax in its regulation of U.S. tech giants. By contrast, most Americans believe in the power of the market to self-correct and are warier of government overreach. Whether consciously or not, it is hardly a stretch to assume that these different attitudes inform thinking about competition policy and enforcement decisions on both sides of the Atlantic.

The focus of this article is on single-firm conduct, and the transatlantic divide over how best to use antitrust and competition policy to navigate this new and exciting world. Section 2 looks at what makes Big Tech unique from an antitrust perspective. Section 3 provides an overview of U.S. and EU competition law as it relates to single-firm conduct, as well as their respective institutional structures. Section 4 assumes a more prospective posture, looking at possible future trends and what steps Big Tech can take to protect its own interests in this environment.

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In this new report from the Scowcroft Center’s Transatlantic Security Initiative, Cyber Statecraft Initiative senior fellow Kenneth Geers argues that the best way for democratic states to defend their own cyber networks is to leverage the multinational strength of political and military alliances like NATO and the European Union. Alliances like NATO give democracies an advantage over their authoritarian rivals by providing already established mechanisms for multinational cooperation. Alliances are therefore better equipped to tackle the inherently international challenges of cybersecurity.  

To illustrate the impact of alliances on cybersecurity, Geers uses events in Ukraine as a case study, comparing the Ukrainian government’s efforts to defend against Russian cyberattacks shortly after the 2014 revolution with measures taken in cooperation with partners to defend the 2019 presidential election. Geers illustrates how collective action in 2019 produced improved security outcomes compared to efforts taken by Ukraine alone. Building on these lessons, Geers argues that the only structures likely to produce tangible results in cybersecurity are those within political and military alliances. Indeed, the only credible cyber superpower is a robust alliance. The report then offers a series of recommendations on how NATO and the EU can promote trust and collaboration among Allies and partners to build a more effective cyber alliance.  

To view the full report at Atlantic Council, please click here

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As the global leader in digital trade, the United States has a big stake in ensuring that international rules facilitating its continued expansion are put in place.

The Obama Administration’s bold agenda to establish these rules across Europe and the Asia-Pacific did not yield lasting success, with the failure of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations and the Trump Administration’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Nonetheless, the key elements of US digital trade policy enjoy bipartisan policy support, providing a promising basis for the next Democratic administration to re-engage with Europe, our biggest digital trading partner.

Part 1 of this issue brief explains why international rules are needed to protect and facilitate digital trade. Part 2 describes the turbulent past decade in transatlantic trade relations and the growing importance of US digital trade with Europe. Part 3 explains why the US government and the European Union (EU), during TTIP negotiations, were unable to agree on a digital trade chapter, including a key provision guaranteeing the free flow of data. Finally, Part 4 suggests how two parallel sets of trade negotiations beginning early this year — between the EU and the United Kingdom (UK) and between the United States and the UK — may help a future US Administration end the transatlantic stand-off over digital trade.

To view the full report at Progressive Policy Institute, please click here

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A recent easing of global trade tensions has not come without critical change involving two of the U.S.’s largest trade partners: Mexico and China.

Talks aimed at easing underlying trade policy bodog casino differences between the U.S. and Mexico and the U.S. and China concluded earlier this year with two agreements. The United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which had been in place since 1994. It sets a new framework for North American regional integration among the three nations.

The U.S.–China Phase One deal included Chinese pledges for the purchase of U.S. farm products, safeguards for intellectual property, and the promise of further talks to reduce trade frictions between the two nations. The trade dispute has included successive rounds of tariffs since early 2018.

Taken together, the two agreements present challenges and opportunities for Mexico, both in the short term and long term, with regard to how it will do business—including with Texas that counts its neighbor as its largest trading partner and as a key link in the production of intermediate and finished goods.

USMCA, while opening the possibility of further regional integration in areas such as digital commerce, is more restrictive than NAFTA in other sectors, such as the automotive sector, where lower Mexican output could adversely affect its gross domestic product (GDP). On the other hand, even with the latest agreement between the U.S. and China, ongoing policy bodog casino differences between the two have prompted trade diversion toward Mexico, which has acquired an increasing share of the U.S. import market.

However, these positive effects of trade diversion may be short-lived and come with the cost of higher prices to consumers.

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Projections of the economic effects of new trade agreements, particularly of their short-term impact, are tentative given the high level of uncertainty that persists regarding trade policy and global growth. In this sense, rising protectionism across the world and within the North American region is one of the main risks confronting the global economy.

In particular, there is uncertainty regarding the extent of the distortions that measures such as tariffs and non-tariff barriers may pose for global trade, supply chains, and the international organization of productive processes. There is also uncertainty about the effects that tariffs and the deterioration in international trade conditions could have on the global economy and investment in the short and medium terms.

Finally, over a longer horizon, greater barriers to trade could lead to a reconfiguration of global value chains to the detriment of aggregate productivity as manufacturing moves away from the efficient allocation of the production of goods and services.

USMCA Auto Sector Effect

USMCA is more restrictive in some respects than NAFTA, particularly in the automotive sector. Under USMCA, the value of regionally sourced content has increased significantly. Additionally, there are new restrictions regarding the origin of steel, aluminum, and vehicle parts used in the production process and new requirements governing labor value content and the wages paid.

Specifically, USMCA stipulates several notable changes in vehicle production. The North American share of the value of automobiles and light trucks produced increases from 62.5 percent under NAFTA to 75 percent under USMCA and from 60 percent to 70 percent for heavy trucks.

Rather than applying NAFTA’s uniform content standard for vehicle parts, USMCA sets separate content requirements (the percentage that must be produced in North America) for three groups: core parts, such as engines and transmissions, 75 percent; principal parts, like electrical and electronic parts, 70 percent; and complementary parts, which include brake systems and miscellaneous parts, 65 percent.

At least 70 percent of the steel and aluminum used in the manufacture of automobiles and light trucks must originate in the U.S., Canada or Mexico.

Notably, requirements for labor value content were introduced in the updated agreement: 40 percent of the materials for automobiles and 45 percent of the content for light trucks must be produced by regional enterprises that pay workers at least $16 per hour. Since Mexican autoworkers currently earn about $7.30 per hour for auto assembly and $3.40 while making automotive parts, this new provision most directly affects Mexico.[1]

The USMCA requirements could make automotive production less efficient and decrease the competitiveness of the automotive industry across the North American region relative to the rest of the world, our estimates show.[2] Using a quantitative general equilibrium trade model—typically used to study the effects of trade reforms on the industry—we estimate the effects of the new requirements, comparing USMCA with NAFTA.[3]

In the baseline scenario, more restrictive rules-of-origin requirements will increase production costs that, in turn, will imply higher prices, reduced output, and a decrease in consumer surplus in the region (Chart 1, blue bars).[4] Furthermore, at the regional level, spending on the transport equipment sector will shift away from local producers and toward foreign suppliers of these goods.

There are considerable losses of real output bodog poker review in the transportation manufacturing sector, as the whole region will reduce its output in the sector. While all countries in the region are negatively affected, Mexico stands to sustain the biggest loss both in terms of the absolute number of vehicles produced and GDP. The competitiveness of some assembly operations in Texas could be affected since facilities such as Toyota’s truck plant in San Antonio and the General Motors SUV unit in Arlington rely on Mexican parts.

Opting Out of USMCA Trade

It is also possible that the new auto provisions increase the burden of compliance to the point that firms opt out of using the benefits of the USMCA and prefer, instead, to source their inputs from the least-cost country (not necessarily from North America) and pay the most-favored-nation (MFN) tariff when exporting. Such a move would hurt regional suppliers. Thus, even in a mildly disruptive scenario, the increase in the rules of origin may increase regional content at the cost of lower North American competitiveness in the automotive industry. In a heavily disruptive scenario, the tougher rules could actually lead to a reduction in the overall regional content in the sector.

Using our model, we estimate the effects that opting out of USMCA could have on the auto sector by considering an MFN opt-in scenario in which all regional trade in the sector faces MFN tariffs. Our estimates imply that this scenario is harsher than our benchmark USMCA scenario, although not drastically so (Chart 1, orange bars). This suggests the possibility that any further tightening of the rules of origin requirements in the auto sector could create incentives for firms to opt-out of the USMCA as a means of conducting trade within the region.

Trade Diversion to Mexico

Trade conflicts between the U.S. and China have also been a factor behind Mexico’s recent export performance. Electrical and optical equipment, machinery, footwear, and textiles are among the sectors where the U.S. has imposed high tariffs on China and where Mexico competes with China for market share.

Thus, it is natural to believe that trade diversion could boost Mexican exports in some industries. Since the U.S.– China dispute began, China has lost market share in the U.S., and Mexico has recorded gains (Chart 2). Most of the market share that China lost in the U.S. involved goods subject to higher tariffs—the same set of goods in which Mexico achieved its largest gains of market share in U.S. imports (Chart 3).

It is important to note that some of Mexico’s gains were in sectors in which China did not export to the U.S. Thus, it appears that Mexican exports have benefited from trade diversion, though perhaps not as much as some might have initially expected.

Notice that the declining share of Chinese imports in the U.S. has outpaced Mexico’s gains. In fact, the increases that Mexico has achieved due to trade diversion amount to only one-third of what China lost. Thus, trade diversion has benefited other countries too, as the rest of the world acquired a market share in the U.S. In particular, South Korea and Taiwan have also gained a considerable presence in the U.S. import market.

Mexico has gained not only in terms of the market share of U.S. imports. China’s market share losses positively affected Mexico’s manufacturing production in sectors in which China lost the most.

However, even though Mexico has been able to gain some output from trade diversion, this improvement has come at someone else’s expense since trade diversion entails an efficiency loss.

In this case, it seems that U.S. consumers have borne the loss through higher prices of imports. Mexico has realized higher prices for the type of exported goods that would have faced tariffs had they come from China. Prices for those Mexican exports to the U.S. increased relatively more than the export prices of goods unaffected by the tariffs.

While there is evidence suggesting that Mexico has, at the margin, benefited from trade diversion, these “gains” may be short-lived if trade tensions lead to a further slowdown of global economic activity, larger trade distortions, and a breakup of global value chains.

Estimates of a counterfactual scenario in which the U.S.–China trade dispute was persistent suggest that both the U.S. and China would sustain real output losses, while Mexico and Canada would increase production, albeit only marginally. However, prices would be much higher, particularly across North America. These higher prices would reduce the gains from globalization for consumers in the region.

Changing Trade Patterns

The adverse impact on economic activity, trade, and investment flows of an evolving and uncertain global trade environment is not surprising. However, calculating the magnitude of this effect is difficult. Mexico as a key U.S. trade partner is, not surprisingly, subject to the crosscurrents of trade tensions between the U.S. and China. These impacts are especially important for Texas, which counts Mexico as its largest trade partner.

Approval of the USMCA, an update to the almost quarter-century-old NAFTA, could by itself change trade. Indeed, costs—especially bodog online casino in the key automotive sector—will rise and tend to make North American products potentially less competitive than they might have been over the longer term, depressing Mexico’s GDP.

However, Mexico stands to gain, albeit in the short term, from trade tensions between the U.S. and China and the imposition of retaliatory tariffs that began in 2018. Mexico has been a beneficiary of trade diversion, accounting for a portion of what China previously supplied to the U.S.

The U.S.–China Phase One agreement that called a ceasefire to the dispute and a pledge for further trade talks make calculating the future benefit to Mexico difficult. The impact of disrupting the production of goods and services and the global value chains that they represent could exacerbate any broader economic slowdown, further trimming Mexico’s short-term gains and negatively affecting its trading partners.

Notes

1. For more information, see “NAFTA Briefing: Review of Current NAFTA Proposals and Potential Impacts on the North American Automotive Industry,” by Kristin Dziczek, Michael Schultz, Bernard Swiecki and Yen Chen, Center for Automotive Research, April 2018.
2. Estimates are derived from a model that can be used to analyze different counterfactual scenarios regarding changes in tariffs and trade costs among different countries and sectors based on two main data requirements: sector-level trade elasticities and expenditure shares between countries and sectors. For more information, see “Trade Theory with Numbers: Quantifying the Consequences of Globalization,” by Arnaud Costinot and Andrés Rodríguez-Clare, Handbook of International Economics, Gita Gopinath, Elhanan Helpman, and Kenneth Rogoff editors, 2014, vol. 4, pp. 197–261.
3. To properly interpret the results of this exercise, it is important to keep in mind that it only contemplates the general equilibrium implications of changes to the barriers that shape automotive trade in the region. The shift from NAFTA to USMCA contemplates changes in other sectors that are not considered for the purposes of this exercise but can have important macroeconomic consequences (i.e., reducing uncertainty). In addition, important assumptions were made in order to map regional value content and labor value content requirements into the model. For more information about the modeling results, contact Alfonso Cebreros or Armando Aguirre.
4. See note 2 for details of the methodology used to produce the estimates depicted in Chart 1.

To view the full report at the Federal Bank of Dallas , please click here

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Economies with already strong underlying information technology are proving to be more resilient than those without this infrastructure already in place.  At a recent event, I listened to officials from Cambodia and Kenya explain how their strong digital track records are paying off during the current crisis.

In Cambodia, which had previously established an enabling regulatory environment around digital financial services, citizens were already accustomed to sending and receiving payments digitally, making it possible for the government to add tax functionality on to the pre-existing digital payment platforms. Similarly, in Kenya, citizens’ relative comfort with digital payments led to a recent uptick in the use of its e-tax system. The Kenya Revenue Authority has also been able to rely on its digital systems to obtain real-time data on emergency-related shifts in consumer spending, which helps the agency to predict the impact on revenues.

But the type of digital transformation necessary to get to this level is comparable to moving a boulder to the top of a mountain. It’s a long, arduous process, and it’s possible to lose footing along the way. Many economies, especially developing countries, rely on deeply entrenched systems and fight an uphill battle when it comes to public trust. In fact, many of the world’s lowest-income economies struggle to collect enough taxes to cover basic state functions. Add a global crisis into the mix and these tenuous relationships between taxman and citizen are likely to fall apart.

The current crisis provides an opportune moment to rework revenue strategies to be more digitally driven.  Tax administrations must shift the focus from simply processing taxpayers’ data to proactively improving Bodog Poker compliance, policies, and efficiency. Modern revenue strategies will, to a large extent, have to run on digital platforms because they are necessary to effectively pursuing critical policy objectives such as:

• Broadening the tax base. Data-centric approaches can be used to close gaps and take advantage of missed opportunities without necessarily increasing the level of taxation. Such measures include: requiring e-commerce platforms to report sales in order to facilitate the collection of VAT and customs duties; analyzing past tax filings of citizens seeking relief under current stimulus programs to verify compliance; and supporting the collection of property taxes by matching the land registry with the taxpayer file.
• Enhancing transparency and trust. Establishing electronic platforms for tax registration, filing, payment, and dispute resolution make processes clear for citizens, provide assurances that tax payments end up in an actual government account, and reduce the risk of officials abusing their discretion. Implementation of technologies such as the MIT-incubated OPAL (Open Algorithm) provides researches, think tanks, or any citizen the ability to independently analyze tax data without having access to personally identifiable information. This will provide unprecedented transparency.
• Reducing the compliance burden. We know from a survey of 190 economies that it is getting easier for people and businesses to pay taxes. There are now 106 economies using electronic filing systems, double the number in 2004. Digital technology is reducing the time spent on paying taxes as well as the total number of individual payments taxpayers must make each year.
• Improving administrative efficiency. As governments mature in their use of information technology, they will be able to achieve substantial efficiency gains. For countries beginning their digital transformation, AI-enabled data capture of paper-based records can speed up the digitalization and reliability of the data. Others find significant value through the simplification of procedures and matching of filing information with third-party data sets. For more advanced tax administrations, the use of advanced analytics to identify underreporting will be a key value driver. In the current crisis, some administrations are also rethinking their balance between offsite and onsite audits.
• Advancing growth and other policy objectives. As the central depository of citizen data, tax administrations play an increasing role in advancing non-tax related objectives. For example, by using taxpayer data to: verify beneficiaries under cash transfer programs, monitor the consumption of goods with detrimental health impacts (e.g., alcohol and cigarettes), model tax policy responses to curb carbon emissions, identify growth drivers in the economy, detect labor market violations, and ascertain the well-being of vulnerable groups in society.

Progress toward these objectives has been uneven and the World Bank cannot get this “modernization boulder” to the top of the mountain alone. To help countries accelerate digital transformation, we need partners with multidisciplinary expertise who can help pull while we push. To that end, we co-founded the Prosperity Collaborative. This new multi-stakeholder initiative is dedicated to helping countries create better tax systems through innovative technology. Together with EY, New America, MIT and the Boston Global Forum, we are just getting started on a journey to bring tangible benefits to developing countries.  Our current priorities are –

• Developing global solutions to build capacity among developing countries and emerging market to undertake a successful digital transformation of their tax administrations;
• Promoting thought leadership on tax and technology;
• Exploring the creation of a mechanism to identify, prioritize, fund, and implement digital public goods for use by tax administrations;

By bringing these leading organizations together under the banner of the Prosperity Collaborative, we aim to create solutions that are well-targeted and easily replicable across different country contexts. Ultimately, we aim to create digital public goods that can be built once and deployed anywhere.

To view the original World Bank Blog post, please click here

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Some recent PTAs contain ambitious provisions to reduce regulatory barriers in digital trade and facilitate cross-border data flows. However, most PTAs fail to holistically support the five pillars of digital trade integration, and are particularly deficient in supporting digital development and inclusion, incorporating adequate digital trade facilitation measures, and facilitating meaningful international regulatory cooperation. This paper provides various policy recommendations to address such deficiencies. This paper also contains a case study of digital trade integration in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It argues that the ASEAN framework currently functions as a weak form of digital trade integration, focusing mainly on political goodwill and high-level cooperation. Although the ASEAN Members are committed to enhancing regulatory cooperation and strengthening their institutions on electronic commerce, the development asymmetry coupled with the conflicting policy preferences of ASEAN Members remains a key obstacle.

Andrew D. Mitchell and Neha Mishra (2020), “Digital Trade Integration In Preferential Trade Agreements”, ARTNeT Working Paper Series, No. 191, May 2020, Bangkok, ESCAP.

Available at http://artnet.unescap.org 

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