Hill Leaders, BSA Press for Eliminating Information Technology Trade Barriers
Now is the time to tackle international obstacles to the free flow of information technology, said House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, at a briefing on trade barriers Aug. 1. "If we don''t tackle these [barriers] before they're embedded," he said, "we're going to have problems" attempting to deal with them later. "This report is exactly what we're looking for" to find solutions, he said of a recent report by the Business Software Alliance, which hosted the briefing.
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The BSA report, "Lockout: How a New Wave of Trade Protectionism Is Spreading through the World''s Fastest-Growing IT Markets -- and What to Do about It," details the obstacles technology companies face when trying to do business in foreign markets.
BSA President Robert Holleyman reiterated the importance of keeping the global market of information technologies open and highlighted the report''s five key obstacles: foreign governments requiring purchasers in that country to buy domestic products, manipulating technology standards to exclude participation from foreign countries, limiting market access by creating security-related regulations, burdensome regulation on cloud computing and tariff barriers.
The U.S. has to find a way to "make friends and influence people," said Susan Schwab, a professor at the University of Maryland and former U.S. Trade Representative. Schwab suggested looking at already-existing trade policies in several industries. Information technology "is so pervasive," she said, "and it cuts across so many different sectors." She continued that "any company that moves and processes huge amounts of data has a fundamental interest in this business," and those are the kinds of companies and industries U.S. trade policy can focus on in advancing the trade agenda of the information technology industry.
The U.S. must work to keep markets open in countries such as India, which has created its own technology standards as a way to exclude foreign companies that follow globally-agreed on technology standards, and China, which requires most agencies within its boarders to use highly secure, and therefore domestic, information technologies, said Cheri McGuire, vice president at Symantec. And, she said, there''s little hope for foreign cooperation if the U.S. were to pursue similar regulations on foreign countries. "We have to be very, very careful, I think, not to enact similar regulations in this country," she said. -- Kate Tummarello