[CTC] Warren: ‘Big Tech’ using ‘backdoor’ access to USTR to influence IPEF

Wed May 3 10:53:57 PDT 2023

INSIDE US TRADE
Warren: ‘Big Tech’ using ‘backdoor’ access to USTR to influence IPEF
May 2, 2023 at 6:42 PM

Former U.S. trade officials working at major tech companies are leveraging their connections to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to try to shape digital trade negotiations in their employers’ favor – and being accorded special treatment by the agency, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) claims in a new report, citing correspondence between USTR and industry officials.

Warren, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, and other progressive Democratic lawmakers have been pressing the Biden administration to ensure that digital trade provisions in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity promote competition and protect privacy – and raising concerns that “Big Tech” companies have been lobbying for measures that could limit the government’s ability to regulate their industry.

The report, released on Tuesday, alleges that “Big Tech is using its revolving door hires to gain backdoor access to key United States Trade Representative (USTR) and Commerce Department officials, undermining the Biden Administration’s promises to end rigged trade deals and protect workers, consumers, and the environment,” as described in a statement issued by Warren’s office.

The report cites emails between USTR and officials at major tech companies like Amazon and Google, obtained via public records requests by the progressive advocacy group Demand Progress and shared with Warren’s office. It does not indicate whether the group requested copies of any correspondence between USTR officials and any other groups.

USTR spokesman Sam Michel told Inside U.S. Trade in an email that the agency was “leading unprecedented engagement with stakeholders who are often left out of trade negotiations.” He cited hundreds of meetings with a range of stakeholders, “including labor organizations, workers, and civil society representatives to expand the conversation and bring in new voices to help shape trade policy, including on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.”

In addition, he said “USTR held nearly 400 briefings with Congress in the last year, many of which were focused on IPEF.” Michel also pointed to recently released public summaries of the negotiations, which he called “a sign of our unprecedented commitment to transparency,” and noted that IPEF chief negotiators “host listening sessions with stakeholders ahead of and during each IPEF negotiating round.”

“Our actions demonstrate how we are bringing new and different perspectives to the table in developing President Biden’s worker-centered trade policy,” he said.

While USTR and Commerce regularly solicit comments from industry as well as civil society groups and other organizations on developing policies, Warren contends some tech industry officials have received special treatment, including “access to nearly every stage of the IPEF negotiation process,” as stated in the report.

Between January and March 2022, the report states, Deputy USTR Sarah Bianchi’s office reached out to tech lobbyists to ask them to provide what Warren’s office describes as “secret input on IPEF priorities.” The emails include requests to former USTR officials Michael Punke and Jennifer Prescott, then working for Amazon, to set up meetings with Bianchi “to get to know them better” and discuss IPEF, as well as a similar request to USTR alumnus and Amazon employee Arrow Augerot. Bianchi's office also reached out to former USTR official Behnaz Kibria, then at Google, for an “off-the-record" meeting on the framework, during that period, the report states. The administration launched the framework with an initial group of partners in the region in May 2022.

“While most outside experts and advocates were limited to submitting public comments on IPEF, these tech lobbyists were being asked to provide secret strategy and advice, conducting backdoor conversations with USTR officials to shape IPEF from its earliest stage and pushing for rules that undermine the public interest,” the report states, adding that tech lobbyists also are among USTR’s “cleared advisers” who have access to classified negotiating drafts.

The public, meanwhile, has “only been able to see a half-page summary of IPEF digital trade negotiations, published months after USTR had already shared that text with Big Tech advisors and then begun negotiations on it,” the report states, citing the summaries released by the agency in March amid criticisms by lawmakers from both parties about USTR’s transparency practices.

In another exchange highlighted in Warren’s report, a USTR staffer asked Punke, who served as deputy USTR and ambassador to the World Trade Organization, for his availability to meet with Tai in his “personal capacity” to speak about Punke’s “time in Geneva and how you approached the job.” Punke has served as vice president for global public policy for Amazon Web Services since 2017.

Follow-up emails between the agency and Punke “indicated that substantive trade issues were discussed during the agenda planning for that meeting,” Warren’s office said in the statement. The emails state that Punke planned to raise concerns related to Mexico’s de minimis policies during the meeting, among other issues.

During a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the administration’s trade agenda in March, USTR Katherine Tai told Warren she was approaching IPEF negotiations with an inclusive, “pro-competition” lens.

“[I]t is our vision in terms of what we are negotiating in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, including in the digital area, that we are bringing with us a pro-competition outlook that is meant to enable as many participants in the economies as possible,” she said.

According to a report on Tuesday by Bloomberg, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was slated to meet later in the day with the Senate Finance Committee to discuss IPEF.

Warren's report outlines several recommendations that her office contends should be followed “to address the ongoing corporate influence-peddling and ensure trade policymakers are working on behalf of the American people,” as described in the statement.

First, her office wrote, USTR and Commerce “must reject the Big Tech digital trade agenda and ensure that any IPEF digital trade rules complement – rather than conflict with – policymakers’ efforts to promote competition in the digital economy, regulate AI, and protect online privacy.”

In addition, the report urges USTR to “make IPEF texts public, eliminating the secrecy that Big Tech has used to furtively drive its agenda with key officials.”

The report also calls for several broader transparency-related reforms, pressing USTR and Commerce to “commit to transparency on all public engagement in order to combat Big Tech’s secret influence peddling, including visitor logs, public appearances, and informal modes of external engagement."

In addition, the report states, the Biden administration should “implement strong ethics reforms that will padlock the decades-long revolving door between large corporations and trade agencies.”

Warren also calls on Congress to pass her “Anti-Corruption & Public Integrity Act,” which includes “critical guardrails that would address these problems at the source by boosting transparency, strengthening ethics rules and enforcement, and fixing federal open records laws,” as described in the statement. -- Margaret Spiegelman (mspiegelman at iwpnews.com <mailto:mspiegelman at iwpnews.com>)

Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826

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