Regions

President Trump has rightly emphasized that AI should be allowed to learn like humans do, and unless the UK adopts a commonsense approach to AI training and copyright, it risks falling behind China in the global AI race.

If the Starmer government thinks for one minute that the PRC will allow the UK to expand exports of anything with any real strategic importance, it is gravely mistaken. It’s time for competitive realism.

In 2023, the United States invested about $175 billion in research conducted at government institutions and universities. That same year, the EU invested about $180 billion, and China about $200 billion.

The UK should reject misleading claims that AI training is theft and instead adopt a modern, permissive copyright framework that protects creativity while enabling the innovation needed to become a global AI leader.

ITIF offered comments on evidence the UK government should draw on; short- and long-term objectives for the UK-China relationship; areas to engage with China, and areas to draw red lines; how engagement could affect other alliances; and how to assess dependencies on China while strengthening security and resilience.

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.

The Bureau should not treat algorithmic pricing as a risk category in itself. The relevant concern is not whether pricing is algorithmic, dynamic, or AI-enabled, but whether it is used to harm competition or consumers. Addressing that will require focusing on market context and firm conduct rather than the type of tool used.

Canada has zero entries among the world’s top 50 science and tech clusters. Waterloo is the best candidate for elevation. To make that happen, the federal and Ontario governments should create an incentive: Tech start-ups based in Waterloo, as well as firms outside Canada that relocate meaningful R&D and innovation production to the region, will pay no tax for a decade.

Canada needs a new federal institution that makes its innovation system more than the sum of its parts: a Canadian Innovation and Industrial Transformation Agency. This institution wouldn’t replace programs. It would govern them coherently, strategically, and at speed.

It’s more important than ever for Canada to invest in domestic production capabilities. Natural Resources Canada must update its value-added analysis to clarify the current state of the mining industry and guide sound industrial policymaking.

A new irrigation technology incorporating AI sensors reduces water use by 30 percent and methane emissions by 47 percent compared to continuous irrigation methods.

Proposed changes to Kenya’s competition regime will hinder, not help its digital economy. Rather than impose substantial changes based on the false premise that digital markets require special treatment, Kenya should use existing enforcement tools to police its growing digital markets.

ITIF’s submission focuses on the ITC’s interest in recent developments in the digital economy for key SSA markets, including national and regional regulatory and policy measures and market conditions that affect digital trade.

When attempting to evaluate the effect that a policy intervention can have on development or innovation, researchers and policymakers routinely look to short-term impacts, both out of urgency and because of the difficulty in maintaining contact with participants over several years.

Over the last decade, mobile money services have brought banking to populations that have lacked formal financial services by allowing users to manage money on their mobile phones. First launched in Kenya in 2007, 96 percent of Kenyan households now use mobile money and can withdraw funds in physical currency from 110,000 agents across the country.

If Korea wants a won stablecoin that matters, give it work on day one: Settle spot ETF trades; connect to tokenized securities (STO); cut remittance costs; and settle cross-border B2B invoices in KRW with fewer hops. Without real uses, the token drifts into speculation.

Korea now faces a clear choice between abandoning discriminatory policies disguised as domestic regulation or risking losing access to American semiconductors and advanced technologies on which its own tech sector depends.

Counterfeit K-beauty products are eroding brand value, endangering consumers, and threatening South Korea’s cultural and trade influence, making stronger cross-border cooperation and AI-driven enforcement essential.

As the Trump administration has made clear, it is laser-focused on one number: the bilateral trade deficit between the United States and other nations. The Lee Jae Myung government should put in place a plan to reduce that deficit to zero, and then ask Trump to renegotiate for a fairer deal.

South Korea must reduce its reliance on China for both semiconductor exports and raw materials by strengthening alliances with the United States and its partners, aligning with export controls, and building a more secure, diversified supply chain to safeguard its long-term competitiveness in the global chip race.

The EU’s €376 million fine against Intel for decades-old conduct risks weakening a struggling Western chipmaker at a time when China is heavily investing to dominate the semiconductor industry.

The Strengthening Cyber Resilience Against State-Sponsored Threats Act is a timely and necessary response to the growing threat posed by state-sponsored cyber actors, particularly from China, but Congress should further refine it to truly future-proof the nation’s cybersecurity posture.

Section 337 was made into law to help address unfair foreign trade practices. It should be used vigorously to prevent the import of IP-infringing products from firms that systemically benefit from unfair government practices in non-market, non-rule-of-law economies such as China.

South Korea must reduce its reliance on China for both semiconductor exports and raw materials by strengthening alliances with the United States and its partners, aligning with export controls, and building a more secure, diversified supply chain to safeguard its long-term competitiveness in the global chip race.

China has spent the last five years escalating a coordinated cyber campaign against Europe—targeting lawmakers, infrastructure, and institutions—even as the EU considers deepening economic ties, exposing a dangerous contradiction in its approach to Beijing.

France has embarked on an ambitious program to build at least six new large nuclear reactors, applying lessons from recent overruns and delays. While success is far from guaranteed, there are important lessons for the United States as it seeks to jump-start its own nuclear sector through recent ambitious executive orders.

Europe’s pursuit of digital sovereignty rests on a flawed premise: that competing with the United States, rather than China, should be the central priority. To advance this goal, Brussels has embraced the so-called “Airbus model”—the belief that the government-led coordination that created an aerospace champion can be replicated to achieve dominance in semiconductors, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI). The idea is seductive and gaining traction, but the analogy is unproven and misguided.

The EU’s €376 million fine against Intel for decades-old conduct risks weakening a struggling Western chipmaker at a time when China is heavily investing to dominate the semiconductor industry.

The European Commission’s DMA action against Meta reveals a strategy of using data protection law principles to stretch competition rules beyond their intended scope—ultimately setting a compliance bar no gatekeeper can meet, infantilizing users, and selectively targeting successful integrated American platforms.

China has spent the last five years escalating a coordinated cyber campaign against Europe—targeting lawmakers, infrastructure, and institutions—even as the EU considers deepening economic ties, exposing a dangerous contradiction in its approach to Beijing.

Policymakers must justify why they should be allowed to tax the major digital companies differently from the leading firms in other industries. This challenge explains why so much of the DST debate has centered around obscure and abstract notions of a company’s “physical presence” and whether the company’s users “create value.”

When local data storage regulations are open or with pre-authorized safeguards, global exports are expected to rise by 3.6 percent and global gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to increase by 1.77 percent. When regulations are more stringent against different geopolitical blocs, global exports are expected to decline by 1.76 percent while GDP is expected to fall by 0.94 percent. Regulations that prohibit the flow of data also have a sizable impact with exports declining by 8.45 percent and GDP declining by 4.53 percent.

By prioritising the digitisation and availability of data that reflects this diversity, countries and communities stand a better chance of shaping AI in their own image, rather than submitting to someone else’s.

The Trump administration’s "Liberation Day" tariffs foolishly alienate allies instead of strategically targeting China, inadvertently weakening U.S. competitiveness and handing a win to Beijing.

Rather than adopt the European Union’s model for regulating competition, policymakers considering how to govern digital markets should carefully evaluate whether digital antitrust regulation is justified and consider whether concerns about anticompetitive behavior can be addressed with less intrusive and more cost-effective tools.

A combination of privacy-protective age verification systems utilizing digital forms of identification and AI, parental controls that are readily available and easy to use, and greater transparency from digital platforms would increase children’s safety and privacy, encourage innovation in improved safety and privacy controls, and better inform policymakers and parents on next steps to protect children.

Mexico's newly elected president, Claudia Sheinbaum, can reverse President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's anti-innovation policies toward genetically modified maize, and improve the lives of small farmers across Mexico.

The current scope of University-Industry (U-I) collaboration in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) opens opportunities for research to progress in innovative directions.

Regulation in the digital sector should only be necessary to remedy market failure that cannot be addressed by the current legal framework, which simply is not true.

As Brazil crafts its own Digital Markets Act in the mold of the EU’s, it should be aware of the potential shortcomings and unsubstantiated advantages associated with such wide-ranging economic regulation within the digital market landscape.