Rodrigo Balbontin

For the EIA to succeed, the Commission needs to address Europe’s broader economic policy environment. The EU’s reliance on the precautionary principle has entrenched a risk-first mindset that slows innovation and diverts resources away from competition and quality improvement.

ITIF recommends that USTR include Temu, AliExpress, and SHEIN on the 2025 Notorious Markets List because all three platforms meet USTR’s criteria as notorious online markets. They facilitate systemic trafficking in counterfeit goods, harming U.S. right holders, undermining fair competition, and placing U.S. consumers at risk.

This report ranks more than 200 regions across Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and the United States on 13 commonly available indicators of innovation competitiveness, and offers policymakers a guide to bolstering regional and national innovation capacity.

Canada should approach exploratory talks regarding a Canada–EU digital trade agreement with caution. Greater alignment with the EU may appear to provide a hedge against U.S. influence, but in practice it risks importing a framework that impedes the potential for Canada’s digital economy and industries while raising compliance costs.

To counter China’s telecom dominance and restore U.S. competitiveness, policymakers should lead a global push for Open RAN standards that foster security, innovation, and fair competition.

A proposed patent tax would punish startups, weaken U.S. competitiveness, and gut a system that has powered American innovation for centuries—all without solving the budget problem it aims to address.

Room remains for the Trump administration to better balance the interests of restoring American manufacturing, removing other nations’ unfair trade practices, and orientating like-mined nations to the long-term China threat in the execution of the Trump administration’s trade and tariff policies.

As U.S. tariffs rise, countries are protecting themselves from American trade policy while cutting new free trade deals elsewhere. A new GTIPA report explores how this paradox could sideline the United States in the next global trade order.

Global Trade and Innovation Policy Alliance (GTIPA) members from 17 countries analyzed how their economies are reacting to U.S. tariffs. Many countries are seeking to support their local producers and establish trade arrangements that are less reliant on the United States.

More than a decade after the overheated SOPA/PIPA debate, experience from around the world shows that blocking access to piracy websites is an effective way to protect copyright holders and increase legal content consumption without harming legal commerce or free expression.

Writing in World Commerce Review, Stephen Ezell and Rodrigo Balbontin argue that escalating U.S.–China trade tensions would harm American innovators by disrupting supply chains, increasing costs, and undermining the very competitiveness the United States seeks to protect.

Advanced technology companies in the United States export more than half a trillion dollars annually. These firms also have a global presence by manufacturing abroad. Retaliation against U.S. tariffs would harm these exports and foster more offshoring.

Rodrigo Balbontin speaks about digital trade and digital services.

The event featured remarks from policymakers, legal experts, and industry leaders who assessed the scope of the threat and the legal and technical frameworks that can help address foreign online piracy.

Rodrigo Balbontin outlines the decline of U.S. manufacturing, the strategic response to China's rise, and implications of the U.S.'s current trade policy, particularly under a possible second Trump administration at an event hosted by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), titled Seizing the Shift: Navigating Trump’s Reciprocal Tariffs.