SHANKER SINGHAM: Foreign Digital Rules Becoming The New Protectionism |
On Dec. 16, I testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee at a hearing titled “Anti-American Antitrust: How Foreign Governments Target U.S. Businesses.” The phrase “anti-American” is not political theater. It describes a pattern: foreign governments are increasingly using antitrust and new “digital regulation” to impose one-sided obligations that fall overwhelmingly on a narrow set of firms—America’s leading technology companies.
In the United States, antitrust is argued as domestic law enforcement. Did a firm exclude rivals? Did consumers suffer? Abroad, antitrust is increasingly operating as trade policy in disguise. Instead of proving harm case by case, many jurisdictions are moving toward prescriptive rulebooks written in advance, often modeled on the European Union’s Digital Markets Act.
These regimes start by naming “gatekeepers” largely by size. Then they impose conduct codes: don’t favor your own products in rankings, limit product integration, open interfaces to competitors, and provide interoperability and data access. The key shift is that these obligations are imposed without the normal evidentiary burden — without showing that a specific practice actually harmed consumers. (RELATED: Trump Demands Record $1.5 Trillion Defense Spending To Build ‘Dream Military’)
In practice, that is how “regulation” becomes protectionism. It acts as a non-tariff barrier: not a tax at the border, but a dense set of mandates that makes it harder for........