By Burcu Kilic
BLOG series:
Notes from the New Frontier of Power
It has only been a few weeks since President Trump’s inauguration, and already, the relationship between political power and tech power has fundamentally shifted. Big tech CEOs not only had the front-row seats at the inauguration and received VIP treatment on Capitol Hill, but they were also greeted with a new administration eager to boost investment in AI, reduce regulations and oversight, appoint officials with innovation-first mindsets, and provide full support against “very unfair” European regulations and fines.
The first week of the Trump Administration was a dream come true for Big Tech. But for those who viewed these companies as champions of (some) liberal rights, inclusiveness, equity, freedom of speech, openness, and free-market policies, it was a nightmare.
The men who stood in the front row at President Trump’s inauguration run some of the largest companies in the world. It is no surprise they align themselves with political power. Maintaining good relations with the Administration, especially under Trump's unpredictable and transactional leadership, is crucial for protecting their business interests and sustaining their market dominance. This is political capitalism at its core, a system where the political and economic elite collaborate to shape the rules and leverage the political system to maintain their dominance.
In fact, this was not the first time tech CEOs have cozied up to political power. Tech companies have always been political, but in the past, it was simply convenient to overlook their close ties to political power and ignore their business model, which built on exploiting market power through unfettered data collection and commodification.
Starting with the Clinton Administration in the 1990s, the U.S. government embraced the rhetoric of “innovation,” choosing to largely refrain from regulating tech companies. The tech industry was treated as a special industry with unique needs, shielded from rules and oversight under the assumption that tech companies could —and should — self-regulate. This laissez-faire regulatory environment allowed Big tech companies to thrive, consolidating their power and influence to build a new capitalist order: surveillance capitalism.
While growing the business and solidifying surveillance capitalism at home, Big Tech needed protection abroad against “unfair treatment” and so-called non-tariff barriers, which are often regulations introduced by other countries to safeguard privacy, competition, and fundamental rights. The United States Trade Representative (USTR) became the angel protector of Big Tech companies' interests abroad, Under the banner of promoting a “,” it played a crucial role in helping U.S. tech companies build their empire internationally, free from regulatory and legislative intervention.
It's worth noting that the USTR has long prioritized the interests of U.S. companies abroad. Historically, it has worked closely with powerful industries, from manufacturing and agriculture to Big Pharma and Big Content, aggressively advancing their interests overseas. Too often, U.S. trade policy has come at the direct expense of American workers, consumers, and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), leaving them to face the consequences of these policy choices at home.
During the Obama Administration, tech companies realized the strategic advantage of having their own binding and enforceable chapter in trade agreements. In addition to benefiting from a laissez-faire regulatory environment and close partnerships with the White House——they provided expertise, services, advice, and even personnel to the administration. They also secured a binding and enforceable chapter on e-commerce, leveling up their game to become significant players in the global trade era.
The Transpacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) was Big Tech’s first shot at the global trade era. The agreement was a “trade” deal that, as many later found out, ironically dealt little with traditional trade. It was supposed to be President Obama’s signature economic project and the largest global deal of the 21st century, covering roughly .
The TPP marked the final chapter of neoliberalism in the United States. It was increasingly disconnected from the realities of the country, its people, and the broader economy. President Obama signed the TPP in January 2016. However, as he pushed for congressional approval, it became clear that the neoliberal trade agenda was losing favor. and . Both major presidential candidates in 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton (who had supported the early development of the TPP as Obama’s Secretary of State) and Republican Donald Trump, . Trade policy played a central role in the 2016 elections, and Trump’s aggressive stance on trade agreements possibly helped secure his path to the White House.
When President Trump first took office in January 2017, he was keen to distance himself from Obama’s neoliberal trade agenda, vowing to reverse “.” He announced that the U.S. would not enact the TPP, effectively blocking its implementation, as the agreement required approval by countries representing a certain percentage of its market.
The remaining TPP countries rebranded the agreement as ), introducing a new mechanism to bring it into legal effect. The CPTPP maintained the majority of U.S.-drafted TPP provisions, including e-commerce rules that restricted regulatory space across various digital issues and covered topics ranging from privacy to competition policy.
The TPP’s e-commerce provisions are widely celebrated as the 21st-century high-standard rules for the digital economy. Their influence extended beyond trade; they sought to shape domestic regulations and policy priorities across all sectors. They quietly became Trump’s digital trade agenda under the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) and made their way into , often even retaining the same footnotes drafted solely for the U.S.
During the Trump Administration, tech companies along with their allies—including pro-corporate members of Congress, industry associations, tech-funded think tanks, and lobbyist groups—have significantly leveraged digital trade rules and the USTR’s trade diplomacy. Their goal— and —has been to restrict individual jurisdictions from developing and testing policies and regulations that could curb Big Tech’s abuses and monopoly power.
This landscape shifted under the Biden Administration, which critically assessed and sought to reform the prevailing Big Tech business model. The Administration adopted a , aligning trade and competition policies in a proactive and consistent manner, particularly in the context of digital trade, with a focus on enhancing resilience and curbing excess market concentration. As antitrust policy moved beyond solely focusing on consumer welfare to broader considerations of fairness, non-discrimination, and recognition of workers' rights, U.S. trade policy developed an innovative . These policies emphasized the need for responsibility and accountability in the digital economy. They challenged the longstanding assumption that what benefits the largest U.S. corporate stakeholders automatically benefits Americans as a whole.
In October 2023, the USTR some controversial digital trade proposals from the World Trade Organization’s Joint Statement Initiative negotiations involving 90 nations in Geneva. Though surprising to many, the move was in line with the administration’s broader agenda to curb Big Tech influence and reassert democratic governance in trade policymaking. The administration could no longer overlook the surveillance capitalist business model of tech companies, nor could it continue to empower them in trade agreements that preserve this model.
Big Tech's "winner-takes-most" digital trade rules did not benefit workers and SMEs at home and abroad. Despite claims of job creation, innovation, and economic contributions, these rules led to market concentration at home, empowered tech companies abroad, and globalized the surveillance capitalist order.
The USTR’s announcement drew both applause and disapproval from members of Congress, civil society organizations, think tanks, digital rights groups, and the tech industry. Notably, the disapproval was more pronounced, highlighting the contentious nature of the policy shift and Big Tech’s far-reaching influence across the political spectrum, academia, and civil society. Over the past decade, tech companies have built an ecosystem involving trade associations, think tanks, academics, international organizations, civil society groups, and consultants who depend on the sustainability of this order. Their reactions underscored that digital trade represents a critical intersection where traditional trade rules meet the challenges of the rapidly evolving digital economy.
All these developments have brought us to this point, and now the question is: What will Trump’s digital trade policy look like? Recent developments—tech CEOs taking the front row seats, a deregulatory push on AI reversing Biden-era safeguards, Trump’s latest criticism of the E.U.’s treatment of U.S. tech giants, and the prospect of U.S. tariffs — suggest that the Trump Administration may advance Obama’s neoliberal digital trade agenda. This scenario will likely please tech companies and many others across the political spectrum who benefit from the prevalence of surveillance capitalism.
However, it is not clear how this approach would benefit American workers, who are supposedly the central focus of Trump’s trade policy. Trump campaignedas a champion of American workers and a friend of labor unions. Just last week, he issued a wide-ranging trade memorandum instructing the USTR to take the lead in reviewing the USMCA’s impact on workers.
Such review should reveal that the USMCA’s digital trade chapter, built on the Obama-era neoliberal TPP rules, seeks to consolidate tech power, monopolize markets, undermine workers’ rights, and disregard AI transparency and accountability.
If the Trump Administration genuinely seeks to champion the rights of American workers, it must address how surveillance capitalism is shaping the workplace—a world where every action is surveilled and cataloged, where AI systems are deeply integrated, and where algorithms dictate hiring, wages, benefits, and working conditions. This digital transformation of the workplace demands entirely new categories of rights, privacy, and protection.
The stakes extend beyond individual workplaces. Effective trade policy must acknowledge and address power imbalances between tech companies and workers, the critical need for meaningful privacy protections, mechanisms for worker representation, the structural challenges of concentrated power and market dominance, and how workers can be disadvantaged through unfair competition.
U.S. digital trade policy should prioritize the needs of workers and society over the profits of tech companies, supporting fair and just trade policies that foster competition worldwide, benefiting not only American workers but also workers overseas. After all, American workers can only truly thrive when they are not in competition with workers overseas whose rights are routinely ignored or undermined.
Therefore, trade policy should preserve the policy space for domestic policymakers, regulators, enforcement officials, and legislators to debate and determine appropriate frameworks that govern the relationship between tech companies and workers.
As surveillance capitalists expand their influence within Trump’s White House to shape digital policy to serve their own interests, it becomes even more crucial to have a trade policy that stands firm on workers’ rights and protections. This is about more than just trade policy—it’s about who gets to define the rules of the global digital economy and whose interests those rules prioritize. Ensuring that trade policy remains genuinely focused on workers is essential to safeguarding the interests of the broader public against the concentrated power of the tech industry.
