Regions

Some proposals would give too much power and discretion to the CMA, create unnecessary costs, potentially chill procompetitive behavior and investment, increase unpredictability in the UK’s merger control regime, and needlessly expand the CMA’s powers to investigate algorithmic behavior in ways that could harm UK consumers.

Amidst this time of increasing technological dynamism and global tensions, and given the special relationship that exists between the United States and the UK, the CMA should reassess how it can implement the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 in a more light-touch way.

The UK’s proposed under-16 social media ban reflects a recurring moral panic about new technologies and would undermine youth connection, parental choice, and online privacy without evidence that blanket bans address the real causes of harms to children.

The UK’s proposed Cyber Security and Resilience Bill presents a much-needed opportunity to kickstart the growth of the UK’s lagging cyber insurance market, which will make businesses more resilient to the increasing frequency and significance of cyberattacks.

The collapse of a UK espionage case against alleged Chinese spies highlights Britain’s refusal to call China a security threat, exposing a dangerous weakness driven by economic dependence.

Ottawa is choosing its next Competition Commissioner, who will decide if firms are allowed to get big by competing or punished for trying. Canada needs competition policy that protects consumers without treating scale, investment, or ambition as suspect.

Canada’s business R&D weakness is not mainly that too few firms do research. It is that too few Canadian firms reach the scale where R&D becomes globally significant, leaving Canada with lots of research activity but too few firms that commercialize and compete at industrial weight.

Canada’s cloud debate is asking the wrong question—control, not domestic ownership or server location, is what determines security and resilience in practice.

Opposition to AI automation at the Canada Revenue Agency misses the point. Smarter systems can improve targeting, boost compliance, and deliver better results with fewer resources than a labour-intensive enforcement model.

Canada is considering banning social media for teenagers, but the evidence suggests this approach is misplaced. Harm is not driven by access alone, but by specific online experiences, and a blanket ban would do little to address them.

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.

As Korea moves toward its goal of commercializing Level 4 autonomous driving by 2027, the central constraint may not be technological readiness but whether the government reforms the mobility market in advance. Without regulatory changes, Korea risks deploying advanced autonomous vehicles within a closed, taxi-centered system.

The Virtual Brunei Initiative shows how small nations can use immersive technology to build digital skills, promote cultural exchange, and drive economic growth through coordinated public-private partnerships.

Japan should revise its draft AI IP code to remove technically infeasible disclosure mandates and instead adopt workable, pro-innovation transparency standards aligned with international efforts like the Hiroshima AI Process to preserve U.S. alignment and avoid deterring AI investment.

Fifty-four members of Congress told Korea’s ambassador earlier this week: Stop targeting American tech companies—or risk the U.S.-Korea alliance itself.

As Korea’s labor debate moves into digital policy, unions risk harming workers in the next generation of industries by prioritizing protections for existing jobs over preparing workers for technological transition.

Chinese firms with ties to Beijing—and in some cases China’s military—are quietly exploiting America’s open economy, taxpayer support, and weak post-acquisition oversight, and Congress should close those loopholes before more U.S. innovation and industrial capacity are used to advance China’s strategic aims.

AI is a general-purpose technology with tremendous promise. But U.S. AI leadership and adoption is by no means assured, because there is intense international competition.

This Section 301 investigation rightly focuses on structural excess capacity. But its scope encompasses 16 economies rather than narrowly addressing the core cause of global trade upheaval—China’s mercantilism—thereby risking dilution of the blame for the country responsible for causing the need to recalibrate the global system.

China should come into full and immediate compliance with its WTO commitments; otherwise, as a last resort, the U.S. government should revoke China’s PNTR status. But policymakers should mitigate second-order effects, particularly on national power industries.

Sales of Chinese hybrids and plug-in hybrids in Europe increased by a factor of 14 between August 2024 and August 2025

ITIF submits that the Commission’s proposed measures go well beyond what should be necessary for Google to comply with the DMA and will harm consumers and chill innovation in search.

Fixing the EU’s productivity, innovation, and competitiveness crisis requires a fundamental political reorientation. Until it makes that shift, expect more reports, more tinkering, and more decline.

A government backed push to replace U.S. payment networks in Europe is less about consumer benefit and more about reducing reliance on American firms, risking economic harm to the U.S. and opening the door for Chinese competitors in a fragmented market.

Europe once led the world in biopharmaceutical innovation, but it lost ground after adopting policies that weakened incentives for R&D and innovation. America must learn from Europe’s experience to preserve its own biopharma leadership and the related economic benefits and access to the most innovative drugs.

Together, the transatlantic alliance can shape the rules of the digital age. Divided, neither side stands a chance.

Countries in the Global South are key markets for Chinese and U.S.-allied national power industries, which require scale economies to flourish. U.S. policymakers should stop viewing them as a “backyard” and recognize that they are a key battlefield in an industrial war.

MC14 exposed the WTO’s deepening dysfunction on digital trade and reform, underscoring why the United States needs a more strategic approach to global trade.

The United States should use MC14 to push for a WTO that actively promotes fair market competition—not one that passively accepts non-market policies, overcapacity, and coercive distortions that are undermining the global trading system.

To protect individuals while preserving the open information ecosystem that supports innovation, policymakers should focus on outputs rather than training inputs, encourage transparency norms for autonomous AI agents, and create a safe harbor for responsible use of publicly available data.

WEF should articulate a global productivity agenda to make a meaningful contribution, because the kind of capitalism we have today is not the reason for slow growth in many developing economies.

A bill proposing ex ante regulation of digital markets in Brazil would harm efficiency and innovation. Given the significance of this bill, the Brazilian legislature should not proceed with a motion to bypass typical civil procedures and debate.

Brazil’s Digital Markets Bill promises to tame tech giants, but in reality, it threatens to import Europe’s flawed regulatory experiment—punishing innovation more than protecting consumers

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.

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.