USTR Froman Requests ITC Digital Trade Reports

Outgoing U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman asked the International Trade Commission to do investigations of business-to-business and business-to-consumer digital technologies developed for overseas sale, including the IoT, cloud and software, in a letter to the ITC released Tuesday. He asked the ITC to review: the broad landscape and recent developments of B2B digital technology principally used by the private sector; foreign market policies that affect U.S. firms’ overseas supplies of B2B digital products and services; and foreign measures that affect international inventories of U.S. firms’ business-to-consumer digital products and services. The investigations would help the Office of USTR evaluate ways companies and workers use the internet and related data networks to ship innovative products and services overseas, and will help the agency assess the impact of trade barriers on manufactured goods trade powered by data networks and digitally enabled services, Froman said. He asked the ITC to complete the first report by Aug. 30, the second report by Oct. 29, 2018, and the third report by March 30, 2019. USTR plans to make the first report public and Froman asked that it not contain confidential business or national security classified information, and asked the ITC to make portions of the second and third reports confidential for 10 years, where warranted.