The Digital Economy

Abstract

The EU has successfully resisted occasional pressures to use the EU’s Digital Single Market as a protectionist tool against the United States. The US has rightly supported the program as hugely beneficial for European growth and innovation. There is no evidence of anti-Americanism in the EU’s competition or tax investigations into US technology giants’ European businesses. On many key battlegrounds of the digital economy, such as copyright and the obligations of online platforms, US firms have been on both sides of many key issues. As the EU continues to be an active regulator setting global standards in many sectors, many US firms are concentrating their advocacy in Brussels rather than Washington. The US and the EU should not allow short-term conflicts over issues such as a Digital Sales Tax to prevent them from collaborating on the digital economy, especially the development of international standards in the Internet of Things.