WASHINGTON– May 3 2024 – GDA Executive Director Joseph Whitlock testified today before the Office of the US Trade Representative on promoting US supply chain resilience. Welcoming USTR’s recognition that the United States must maintain close and productive economic relationships with its trusted allies to achieve supply chain resilience, the GDA focused its comments on the critical importance of maintaining cross-border access to knowledge, ideas, and information as a core feature of a deliberate US government approach to promoting the durability, agility, and strength of the US supply chain.
“American efforts to build a more secure and resilient supply chain with our allied partners through near-shoring and friend-shoring are increasingly important. However, these efforts will only succeed if the United States and its allies trust one another and work together,” Whitlock said.
“Conversely, if we allow one another to improperly block or restrict each other’s access to information and technology – especially for arbitrary, discriminatory, disguised, or unnecessary reasons – we will fail. Permitting such restrictions is antithetical to supply chain resilience. This is why USTR must reengage with US allies to secure future US access to the information and data that we need to protect the supply chain and our economic and national security.”
The GDA’s comments (linked here) focused on:
- The relationship between US supply chain and workforce resilience and the adoption of software-based tools to compete globally in advanced manufacturing, precision agriculture, and skilled services. These tools which reliable access to data from around the world. When that access is interrupted by foreign data transfer restrictions, localization mandates, and digital customs duties, the US workforce is placed at a significant competitive disadvantage, frustrating efforts to grow American manufacturing and service jobs.
- The impact of foreign data transfer restrictions on US jobs across the supply chain: Across the supply chain, jobs that are jeopardized by such restrictions include – but are not limited to – US jobs that depend upon digitally-enabled or digitally-delivered exports from the United States. Some 40 million US jobs depend on international trade; 16 million US jobs are in software-related fields; and roughly 4 million new US manufacturing jobs are anticipated in the coming years.5 US supply chain resilience is also threatened by trading partner imposition of customs duties on US digital exports.
- The impact of such restrictions on diversity and inclusion in the supply chain: Foreign cross-border data restrictions also undermine efforts to increase diversity in resilient supply chains – harming diverse communities across the United States and beyond. As the United Nations has stated, “regulatory fragmentation in the digital landscape…is most likely to adversely impact … less well-off individuals, and marginalized communities…, as well as worsen structural discrimination against women.”