Big Tech Policy

The House Judiciary Committee has launched an investigation into South Korea's discriminatory targeting of U.S. tech companies, particularly Coupang, marking an important escalation in Washington's pushback against non-tariff attacks that use regulatory measures to weaken American technology leadership. These attacks—which have cost U.S. tech companies over $30 billion globally in the past decade—disproportionately target American firms through fines, operational restrictions, and forced infrastructure investments while creating openings for Chinese competitors.

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.

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.

The Korea Fair Trade Commission's past enforcement against U.S. technology firms justifies concerns that the proposed Fairness Act will reflect de facto discrimination against American commerce.

In every wave of U.S. industrial leadership, other nations have attacked American multinationals, especially tech firms, for blatantly protectionist reasons.

The EU’s latest antitrust investigation against Google misreads competitive AI markets, risks politicized enforcement, and could heighten transatlantic tensions amid intensifying U.S.–China technological rivalry.

If South Korea seeks a globally credible competition law framework, it should avoid implementing a model of digital antitrust regulation that is, in many ways, even more intrusive than the EU's Digital Markets Act.

Governments across the political spectrum are increasingly pressuring online platforms to remove lawful content, threatening free speech by politicizing content moderation decisions that should remain in the hands of private companies and governed only by the law.

The DMA’s forced interoperability undermines platform differentiation, weakens security and reliability, and ultimately leaves European consumers with degraded versions of global technologies.

The European Commission’s €120 million DSA fine against X is arbitrary and overreaching. The U.S. government should continue pushing back against foreign regulations that harm American platforms and citizens.