US Chamber Blasts DOJ for Reversing Digital Trade Provisions

DOJ’s decision to withhold support of long-held digital provisions in trade agreements undermines U.S. democratic values, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a letter to Antitrust Division Chief Jonathan Kanter on Thursday. The Chamber questioned the division’s role in the removal of a digital trade chapter in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF). The organization asked Kanter to explain specifically what his office “finds objectionable” within the competition chapter of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that “justified a complete gutting of those provisions in IPEF.” The Chamber asked what role DOJ might have played in U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai’s decision to abandon digital trade provisions at the World Trade Organization. DOJ didn’t comment.