Restoring US Leadership on Digital Policy

The US emerged as a global leader in digital policy in the 1990s thanks to its pro-innovation approach, supplemented by multi-stakeholder and international cooperation on key issues. However, the US lost this position of global leadership after deprioritizing digital policy, and stands to lose even more as rising anti-tech sentiment translates into policies that hinder innovation and economic growth. The global digital policy scene in recent years has been marked by European overregulation and overreach, a rise in digital protectionist policies, and threats to democracy from China and Russia. The US could restore its position of global leadership on digital policy by prioritizing innovation, free trade, and democratic values and cooperating with its allies to advance those priorities. 

This report recommends several steps the U.S. government can take to respond to these threats and correct its recent failures:

▪ The White House should make U.S. global leadership on digital policy a top priority within the current administration’s mission to restore America’s global standing, rejecting the heavy-handed European approach to digital policy, and making it clear that the American approach of light-touch regulation and targeted pro-innovation policies wins every time.

▪ The administration should forcefully push back against digital narratives and policies that hurt U.S. businesses and workers, including from allies such as the EU.

▪ The U.S. government should establish forums for multistakeholder participation in digital policy issues.

▪ The U.S. government should continue to cooperate with its allies against digital authoritarianism and seek out additional opportunities to do so.

▪ The State Department should lead a global narrative promoting the United States’ pro-innovation approach to digital policy and why that approach, as opposed to China’s or the EU’s, is the key to digital-economy success in other nations.

▪ The State Department should push back against the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD’s) “digital victims” narrative and explain why digital innovation in higher-income nations is key to driving development in lower-income nations.

▪ The State Department should stop funding organizations that misleadingly paint U.S. digital policy and performance in a bad light.

▪ The International Trade Administration (ITA) should expand its Digital Attaché Program.

▪ The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) should push for more countries to sign onto the Information Technology Agreement.

▪ USTR should collaborate with America’s allies on agreements and initiatives that facilitate cross-border data flows.

▪ The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) should better analyze digital protectionism by other countries and the U.S. Department of Commerce and USTR should develop a strategy to fight it.

▪ The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) should take on a greater global leadership role in setting international standards and best practices.

▪ Congress and the Department of Justice should lead on addressing concrete online harms such as revenge pornography, data breaches, cybercrime, and intellectual property (IP) theft domestically.

▪ Congress should maintain a pro-innovation approach to regulating digital policy issues.