The Trump administration has made no secret of its close ties to Big Tech. Domestically, the administration’s favors to tech giants include a push for deregulation and dropping enforcement cases against tech companies. A similar deregulatory push can be seen at the international level. Using tariff threats as a cudgel, U.S trade policy under this administration has unabashedly advocated for the interests of big tech corporations, targeting laws, policies, and enforcement actions that could affect their profits.   

By reviewing and categorizing hundreds of pages worth of public comments submitted by tech industry lobby groups, Public Citizen has previously mapped:

• The Big Tech demands behind President Trump’s tariff negotiations, showing that over 100 digital policies in more than 45 jurisdictions around the world are in the crosshairs of big technology companies and their lobby groups; and
• The Big Tech demands for the USTR’s 2026 NTE report, showing that industry lobby groups are targeting hundreds of digital policies in more than 60 jurisdictions.

The new map of the 2026 NTE report reveals that the corporations have indeed been successful in having their interests blessed as U.S. government policy objectives. The new NTE Report 2026 (once again) targets hundreds of digital policies in 76 jurisdictions, a significant increase in the number of policies being targeted compared to last year’s report (which targeted digital policies in 65 jurisdictions). ^[1]

The report’s targets, which include many highlighted by industry groups, include:

1. Anti-monopoly laws: Dominance of digital markets allows a small group of large companies to engage in anti-competitive behavior that harms both users and other smaller businesses. This is recognized as a problem across the world, including in the U.S.
   
   Over the last decade, several jurisdictions such as the EU, Japan, Türkiye and the U.K. have attempted to create more competitive digital ecosystems by implementing digital sector-specific competition regulation. Several other countries, including Australia, Korea, Brazil, South Africa, and Vietnam, are also considering similar legislation. These laws aim to prevent dominant digital entities from engaging in particularly harmful behavior. For example, the EU’s digital anti-trust law, the Digital Markets Act, designates certain large service providers as “gatekeepers,” on the basis of objective criteria such as the size of its user base and revenue — not on the basis of a company’s nationality. Designated gatekeepers must meet requirements, such as allowing interoperability with smaller service providers and refraining from favoring their own products in search rankings.^[2]
   
   This year’s NTE targets both proposed and implemented digital anti-trust laws parroting the incorrect assertion by tech companies that such regulations are discriminatory, despite being neutral in their application. Big Tech-friendly members of Congress have conducted hearings on Capitol Hill, notably calling out countries such as Korea and the EU for daring to regulate U.S. companies. The Trump administration has included provisions prohibiting so-called ‘discriminatory behavior’ against U.S. companies in its recent reciprocal trade agreements (ARTs), such as those signed with various Latin American and Asian countries.
   These provisions can be used to challenge any anti-trust enforcement against Big Tech companies in the signatory countries. 
   
   
2. Privacy and data protection: The growth of the data economy over the last decade has highlighted the need for increased protection of privacy rights of users. Accordingly, several countries now implement privacy and data protection laws that regulate how companies can process, store, and export personal data.The NTE report targets 34 jurisdictions over their regulations of data exports. Countries may have multiple reasons to regulate exports of data; many of these regulations are implemented on grounds of data protection, some for national sovereignty, security, or other reasons.^[3]
   
   The report targets data protection laws and regulations in 30 jurisdictions. For instance, the report targets Brazil’s data protection law, claiming that it restricts the transfer of personal data outside Brazil, even though the law provides multiple routes to export data.

   
   Most countries do not completely bar data exports or otherwise completely restrict transfers of personal data to foreign countries; they merely impose certain conditions, such as requiring that privacy rights of users be adequately protected when the data is moved to a foreign location. In the absence of such provisions, companies would be free to avoid any domestic privacy laws by merely transferring data to a jurisdiction with no regulations.

   Several countries also regulate cross-border data flows for reasons related to national sovereignty, to enable regulators to access data, and to aid in local economic development. The NTE Report targets 17 jurisdictions that implement or propose data governance measures that regulate cross-border data flows for national security, developmental, or other reasons.
   

3. AI regulations: With AI quickly becoming embedded in nearly every aspect of our lives, some jurisdictions are seeking to regulate the development and deployment of AI systems to mitigate potential harms. Big Tech companies are seeking to limit the ways in which governments can regulate AI to reduce their compliance costs and limit oversight. Thus, the EU’s AI Act — a landmark regulation seeking to impose risk-based obligations on AI service providers — is targeted in the NTE Report.
   
   One of the ways in which transparency of AI and other digital systems can be enhanced, and harm is prevented by enabling regulators and independent researchers to access source code. The AI Act, for instance, imposes various transparency and accountability requirements for AI system developers and deployers, which could extend to scrutiny of source code. Big Tech companies oppose methods of making complex AI and other systems more accountable, wrongly claiming that this could expose their intellectual property to misuse. This ignores the fact that regulators in a number of other contexts — competition enforcement, drug approval and so on — all require proprietary knowledge to be disclosed. There is no reason why AI technology, with its profound social and economic implications, should not be subject to disclosure requirements when required in public interest.In addition, the NTE Report calls out Korea, Ecuador, and Japan for seeking to promote domestic capacity building in the AI sector — something which more countries will increasingly seek to do. Kenya is called out for proposing a tax on AI services.
   
   
4. Revenue sharing regulations: Several jurisdictions are seeking to prevent the cannibalization of domestic industries (such as publishing and domestic content production) by large streaming or other digital platforms. The NTE report lists 6 jurisdictions with such laws. It targets regulations in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada requiring digital platforms to pay news publishers for re-use of their material, as well as EU, Canadian, and South African efforts at implementing regulations to promote and prioritize local content on online streaming and other digital services.
   
   
5. DSTs and other taxes: Many countries are unable to appropriately levy corporate income tax on Big Tech companies as these companies do not have a physical presence within their borders. Instead, some have implemented Digital Services Taxes (DSTs) to ensure that these companies pay tax within their jurisdictions. The NTE Report targets 8 jurisdictions that impose taxes on digital service providers — Canada, Colombia, the EU, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Türkiye, the UK. The report brags that, due to U.S. pressure, Canada has begun the repeal of its DST, though the process is incomplete, while India has completely withdrawn its digital taxes (that were targets of previous NTE reports). 
   

The NTE Report also highlights several provisions included in recently signed ARTs that Big Tech lobby groups have demanded. Notably, the ARTs with Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ecuador, and Indonesia all contain provisions restricting the right of these countries to regulate data exports as lobbied for by industry groups including the Global Data Alliance (GDA), the Coalition of Service Industries (CSI), the Computer and Communication Industry Association (CCIA), the Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC), the Business Software Alliance (BSA), and ACT, The App Association (ACT). These trade associations and lobby groups represent tech giants including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook, amongst others. Similarly, ARTs contain provisions prohibiting the imposition of digital services and other taxes, which have been consistently attacked by these industry lobby groups, as well as so-called “non-discrimination” provisions that could be used, amongst other things, to target digital competition regulation.

In the overall analysis, the NTE report provides one more example of how the Trump administration’s trade policy agenda has been captured by Big Tech companies. Actions such as opposing foreign taxation of Big Tech companies, opposing regulatory action against anti-competitive and anti-privacy practices of Big Tech companies, and so on, may appear to benefit the U.S. by boosting profits of Big Tech, but will ultimately reduce trust in U.S. technology companies and spur the development of local alternatives. We are already seeing this in the AI space with several countries seeking to promote the development of local AI infrastructure and services.

Targeting foreign digital regulations in the broad manner done by the NTE Report ultimately makes consumers of digital services the world over less safe, reduces the ability for smaller enterprises to compete in the digital economy, and concentrates power in the hands of Big Tech companies. 

In addition, pursuing a deregulatory agenda abroad also harms U.S. consumers and small businesses. The last few years have seen increased debate over domestic regulation of technology in the U.S., particularly as the known and potential harms of digital platforms, AI systems, and unregulated data flows have become more apparent. Several domestic laws and policies — aimed at promoting a level playing field in the digital ecosystem, protecting user data, ensuring the safety of children online, protecting vulnerable communities against harms caused by AI systems and taxation of Big Tech companies — are similar to the foreign laws targeted by the NTE Report. It is, therefore, short-sighted and a clear abandonment of the national interest to attack the types of robust digital governance measures that should be adopted domestically. Instead of attacking other countries’ digital laws, the U.S. should seek to emulate similar types of public interest protections. Not only would this help consumers and small businesses in the U.S. and abroad, it would also spur greater confidence and trust in U.S. tech providers, thereby keeping open export markets, where the U.S. increasingly has to compete with alternatives from Chinese and other tech providers.