WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Google, Microsoft, Citigroup, IBM, GE and other top-tier American companies on Thursday urged the United States to push for trade rules that protect the free flow of information over the Internet.
The unveiling of principles hashed out by the companies over the last nine months "is almost an historic moment," Rick Johnston, senior vice president for international government affairs at Citigroup, told reporters.
While past trade agreements have largely focused on eliminating tariffs on manufactured and agricultural goods, "we're now in an era where the economy is literally driven by the Internet. It's a digital economy," Johnston said.
The business coalition says it wants future U.S. trade pacts to "reflect the new realities of the global economy: specifically, the contribution of the Internet toward economic growth, toward job creation and exports," said Bob Boorstin, director of public policy for Google, which has battled Internet restrictions in China and other countries.
One "very dangerous trend" is a requirement by an increasing number of governments for companies to locate data centers within a country's borders in order to provide services, Boorstin said.
Such laws are discriminatory and contrary to the notion of cross-border trade, the coalition said in its paper, which also criticized actions "governments around the world" have taken to block access to information services such as Facebook, Twitter, WordPress and YouTube.
The companies said they hope their ideas will be reflected first in the proposed Transpacific Partnership, a free trade agreement that the United States is negotiating with eight countries in the region.
But they said the United States also should push for a new international consensus on ensuring cross-border data flows in other forums such as the World Trade Organization, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, which is holds its annual summit this month in Hawaii.
"We want the free flow of data just like we want the free flow of goods and services," said Nuala O'Connor Kelly, chief privacy leader at General Electric.
(Reporting by Doug Palmer; Editing by Xavier Briand)
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