ITIF’s Non-Tariff Attack Tracker is a knowledge base documenting international policy assaults on leading U.S. tech firms in the form of discriminatory regulations, targeted enforcement, digital taxes, and data and infrastructure mandates that are framed as neutral domestic measures but in practice weaken U.S. firms, extract resources, and erode their global competitive advantage.

NTAs restrict U.S. firms’ ability to innovate and compete on level terms, undermining U.S. technology leadership, economic strength, and national security in the geostrategic competition with China. Congress and the Administration need to have policy tools at their disposal to identify, document, prevent, and respond to these measures.

“Non-tariff attacks” on U.S. tech companies are not just tax and regulatory hurdles—they are also eroding America’s strategic edge. Washington must identify, deter, and counter these measures in order to prevent ceding U.S. technology leadership to other nations.

A growing proliferation of antitrust regulations, content-moderation requirements, data-localization mandates, digital service taxes, exorbitant fines and fees, and local content requirements reveals a clear pattern: They are designed to unfairly burden and extract revenue from American Big Tech.

Growing tensions between the United States and Europe over digital trade and technology regulation risk weakening the transatlantic alliance at a time of intensifying competition with China. Washington sees European rules as disproportionately targeting U.S. firms, while Europe views them as necessary to reduce dependence on American technology. Unless both sides address these differing threat perceptions and pursue regulatory compatibility, fragmentation could undermine their ability to shape global technology rules and allow China to fill the gap.

The European Commission is challenging Meta’s decision to restrict third party AI assistants on WhatsApp, arguing it may violate competition rules. The argument here is that forcing Meta to open its platform would undermine its vertically integrated AI model, weaken incentives for continued investment, and introduce security and operational risks. At a critical moment in global AI competition, such regulatory actions could slow innovation at a leading American firm and advantage foreign competitors.

Global trade is evolving into a form of mercantilist economic warfare where foreign nations use discriminatory regulations to target the U.S. tech sector, draining its wealth and undermining American innovation.

The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) imposes the heaviest regulatory burdens on large platforms in a way that overwhelmingly targets U.S. technology companies, exposing them to disproportionate compliance costs and fines while largely sparing European firms. This discriminatory model functions as a non-tariff attack that risks weakening U.S. innovation and competitiveness, and is now being replicated globally, amplifying the strategic challenge for American tech leadership.

While critics attack “big tech” from many angles, these five companies develop frontier technologies that require large-scale development, build infrastructure ranging from data centers to subsea cables, and create spillovers from health care to nuclear energy.