Regions

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.

The Competition and Markets Authority’s looming decision to label Google with significant market status is the first step in a process that threatens to degrade the British consumer experience without achieving meaningful benefits to competition.

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.

Canada stands at a pivotal moment to leverage its natural resource boom into long-term industrial strength by tying faster permitting and land access to reinvestment in innovation. A modest levy on resource extraction could fund a new federal agency focused on turning Canadian R&D into real production and globally competitive advanced industries.

Canada risks falling behind as a low-productivity, resource-based economy just as China rises as a global technology leader and U.S. protectionism grows. To help turn the ship of state toward a technology-driven economy, the government should take the simple but impactful step of giving Canadian industry more say in setting university research priorities.

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.

South Korea’s export restrictions on mapping data act as a protectionist measure that unfairly limits competition from foreign firms. Korean policymakers should reform these rules not only to remove this non-tariff trade barrier but also to ensure that they do not hold back the use of geospatial data by emerging AI tools.

For Trump, it’s a new world and Korean President Lee Jae Myung and his administration needs to treat it as such by negotiating a new deal that preserves Korean market access to America in exchange for real concessions on what at the end of the day are relatively minor things for Korean economic competitiveness.

Although the Draft Guidelines provide guidance for stakeholders as to how the Act will be enforced, they do not adequately ensure that harms to mobile innovation and Japanese consumers will be minimized.

In the Trump and China era, South Korea must move beyond export-led growth. Scaling up small firms and boosting productivity in services must be national imperatives.

Japan is facing a demographic crisis, with a population aging faster than any other in the world. 3D printing offers a solution, enabling Japan to modernize its aging infrastructure and build new developments despite its shrinking labor force.

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.

Chinese advanced industries may not have U.S. market access after the trade war, but they will have the rest of the world’s. American companies will be left with the scraps of the U.S. market. Scale will determine the winner.

Chinese e-commerce platforms are profiting from large-scale design theft that undermines independent creators on sites like Etsy. U.S. policymakers should respond with stronger IP enforcement and trade regulations to protect the American creative economy.

In Law360, Eli Clemens argues that international anti-counterfeiting efforts must directly confront China’s central role in the counterfeit trade, or risk rendering global enforcement guidelines ineffective.

In its push for digital sovereignty, the European Commission is reportedly planning to replace Microsoft Azure with the French cloud provider OVHcloud or another European alternative. But this move, while politically symbolic, would be costly. Far from enhancing security, this migration would sacrifice sound procurement and EU legal obligations in service of a hollow vision of digital nationalism.

The EU’s Digital Markets Act was sold as a blueprint for fairness and innovation. But instead of fostering competition, the DMA risks turning Europe into a regulatory island—more isolated, less competitive, and increasingly irrelevant on the world stage.

Schleswig-Holstein’s move to drop Microsoft for open-source tools reflects costly digital protectionism driven by politics, not practicality. EU governments should focus on evidence-based tech procurement over nationalist agendas.

France may label certain social media platforms as porn sites to enforce age checks, a move that misrepresents platform use and raises privacy, free speech, and regulatory concerns.

It is critical that, in tackling both these issues, the EU avoids engaging in digital protectionism, which would harm European competitiveness further.

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.