Trade baby steps

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May 06, 2022 View in browser   By Ryan Heath and Steven Overly Check out the weekly Global Insider podcast.| Follow Ryan on Twitter. HAPPENING TOMORROW The investiture of French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. Macron's party has sealed a deal to head a three-party "presidential majority" coalition called Ensemble! (Together!) in the country's upcoming parliamentary election. 12 GERMANS WHO GOT PLAYED BY PUTIN Gerhard Schröder is offender-in-chief, but it's also time for an Angela Merkel cold shower, writes my colleague Matthew Karnitschnig : "Even after Moscow's invasion of Georgia, brutal bombing of Syria, annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas, downing of MH-17, gangland-style murder of a Chechen rebel in central Berlin, and Navalny's poisoning, Merkel insisted Putin could be reasoned with." Overall takeaway: Rarely has the confidence of the political class of a country been so thoroughly pulverized overnight . A good example that Berlin knows it: Not only is it now moving to supply Ukraine with weapons, but Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany's president and Chancellor Olaf Scholz's party colleague, spoke Thursday with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and "cleared up past irritations," per Steinmeier's office.   INTRODUCING DIGITAL FUTURE DAILY - OUR TECHNOLOGY NEWSLETTER, RE-IMAGINED:  Technology is always evolving, and our new tech-obsessed newsletter is too! Digital Future Daily unlocks the most important stories determining the future of technology, from Washington to Silicon Valley and innovation power centers around the world. Readers get an in-depth look at how the next wave of tech will reshape civic and political life, including activism, fundraising, lobbying and legislating. Go inside the minds of the biggest tech players, policymakers and regulators to learn how their decisions affect our lives. Don't miss out, subscribe today.     TRADING IN CIRCLES What's another way to describe President Joe Biden's forthcoming Indo-Pacific Economic Framework? Optimists in the administration call it a "multilateral partnership for the 21st century" — and a cornerstone of a strategy to counter China. Skeptics think it's a pile of crumbs substituting for an actual trade deal. With leaders from Southeast Asia about to fly into Washington for a postponed U.S.-ASEAN summit starting Thursday, key industry groups and trading partners told POLITICO they're landing somewhere in the middle. They aren't buying into the administration's spin — and instead call the framework a "starting point," "confidence-building measure" and "baby steps." Remember: Those are American and allied voices, all of whom have an incentive to be polite in public. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai promises "meaningful economic engagement." Singapore and Australia hope she can deliver. "Down the track, if market access opportunities were available, I'm sure all countries would readily welcome that," Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan told POLITICO, while cautioning "we're not there yet, and everyone needs to be patient." "Let's take some baby steps toward market access and trade liberalization," Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said during a U.S. visit at the end of March, referring to the framework. USTR and the Commerce Department have received dozens of comments from industry groups and labor unions. Nate Herman, senior vice president of policy at the American Apparel & Footwear Association, warns "partial engagement and half measures are not the path to long-term success." Marc Mealy, senior vice president of policy at the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council, thinks it's a "confidence-building measure" after the U.S. walked away from its Obama-era "pivot to AsiaAs for whether it will have a real impact on trade, Mealy hopes the framework is "not an endpoint, but a starting point " David Salmonsen, senior director at the American Farm Bureau Federation, is willing to be patient: hoping the framework will "over time" include provisions that reduce tariffs and expand market access. Lori Wallach, director of the American Economic Liberties Project's Rethink Trade program, which promotes anti-monopoly measures as well as tough labor and environmental standards, said the framework is a "test run" for future trade agreements that don't simply exchange market access for better standards. Tech giants, like Amazon, Google, IBM and Intel, want the framework to contain enforceable commitments from countries in Asia not to restrict the flow of data, impose onerous content rules, demand digital taxes or otherwise implement strict regulations that go beyond global standards. Karan Bhatia, Google's vice president of government affairs and public policy, would rather see an agreement that includes just a handful of countries and contains those provisions, rather than a deal that sacrifices them to attract broader support. REALITY CHECK Question for the administration: What's the honest answer to a diplomat or minister on the receiving end of this framework, who wants to know why the U.S isn't participating fully in all the other existing regional frameworks? There are two major trade deals that don't include the U.S. (the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership), not to mention the 30-year-old Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and Quad alliance. The administration is in a bind. Despite calls from lawmakers on both sides to pursue trade deals, there is little doubt that American voters — who tell pollsters about their theoretical support for trade, while delivering backlash to actual trade deals — do not have an appetite for major, multilateral trade agreements. Though it's six years in the rear-view mirror, Biden's trade officials are scarred by the Trans-Pacific Partnership backlash aired in the 2016 election, and the intimate link between that and Donald Trump's political ascendancy. The calculation is that the administration must offer something, but since the something can't be an actual trade deal, these are the best crumbs it can muster. GLOBAL RISKS AND TRENDS U.K. — NORTHERN IRELAND ELECTION: Counting started today for 90 seats in the Northern Ireland assembly, but no results were announced ahead of Global Insider's publication. JAPAN — A NEW NUCLEAR EMBRACE: Japan to use nuclear to cut dependence on Russian energy. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel will travel to Japan next week to take part in Thursday's 28th EU-Japan summit. CANADA — CONSERVATIVES KEEP QUIET ON ABORTION: Philippe Fournier, the poll guru and creator of 338Canada, starts a regular column for POLITICO with a piece here on why the Conservatives are keeping quiet on abortion. ABORTION — BIG BROTHER WILL BE WATCHING NOW The prospect of a world where Roe v. Wade is overturned has triggered a fresh wave of anxiety about government use of personal data. State-level prosecutors could use digital surveillance to target women getting abortions. Seemingly innocuous data could now be weaponized against anyone traveling to an abortion clinic, buying abortion pills online and even just searching for more information about advocacy work with abortion rights groups. This isn't merely theory, reports POLITICO's Sam Sabin: data broker SafeGuard has sold aggregated location data about people who visited Planned Parenthood locations, and in 2017, prosecutors relied on a search extracted from a woman's phone about buying abortion pills online to charge her with the murder of her stillborn fetus. Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, told Sabin that he's worried tools designed to optimize health care will be "repurposed into some sort of 'Handmaid's Tale'-style tracking device," and that women who suffer miscarriages could also be victims of that targeting. U.S. POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE LEAKED RULING: It's too early to tell, given we don't have an official ruling, but here are key framing considerations: — Helps Donald Trump: when the former president inevitably weighs in, it will be the claim responsibility for nominating the justices that made it possible. He remains the 2024 Republican frontrunner. — Won't change the House of Representatives calculus much: There's too much heavy gerrymandering on both sides for a single issue or decision to swing many seats. And abortion isn't the wedge issue it used to be, argues Sarah Isgur, Justice Department spokeswoman during the Trump administration and host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions, because most voters have now self-sorted into the party that aligns with their abortion views. — May assist Democrats in Georgia: The sort of suburban moderate women who turned Georgia blue in 2020 may well be the ones most angry about this Supreme Court opinion. Set against viciously divided Republicans in the state, it's easy to see that dynamic helping Stacey Abrams become governor in November, and Raphael Warnock retain his Senate seat. — What a showcase of Democrat legislative inaction: Why is all the state abortion legislation Republican-driven? Why can't Democrats, who run everything in Washington, legislate to protect women's abortion access? These facts don't augur well for Democrats driving an overall backlash turnout in November. BY THE NUMBERS: Around 50 countries have liberalized their abortion laws since Roe v. Wade. Only four countries have tightened abortion restrictions in recent years: Poland, El Salvador, Nicaragua and many states of the United States. There are still parts of the European Union where abortion is illegal. For example, the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola , is from Malta, a country that gets the top score in European LGBTQ rights rankings, but where abortion is still illegal. HEADLINES YOU DIDN'T THINK YOU'D READ IN 2022: "Abortion travel is now an employee benefit." COVID — WTO PUTS VACCINE IP WAIVER PROPOSAL TO TEST: World Trade Organization officials have circulated a draft proposal that would temporarily waive intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines, paving the way for members to start discussing the plan. That will compel members, including the deal's brokers, to signal whether they'll support the divisive proposal. The compromise's narrow scope has outraged supporters of the original proposal, which also provided for access to trade secrets and extended the waiver to cover Covid-19 tests and treatments. Reality check: Developing country governments can be as outraged as they want — it won't change the calculus of this possible WTO deal. It'll be a miracle if even this compromise can achieve the consensus needed to become a deal. AMERICA'S GLOBAL PRIVACY POWER MOVE U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced the so-called Global Cross-Border Privacy Rules Declaration last month, but now the administration has to find a way to make it work: So it convened officials from the U.S., Latin America, Asia and Europe in Honolulu to begin hashing out the privacy push. The U.S. and some of its allies want to take the APEC privacy framework and apply it worldwide: essentially creating a global standard for moving people's personal information between countries. They want regulators like the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to enforce it. "There isn't a multilateral mechanism that exists," Shannon Coe , director of global data policy at the Commerce Department's International Trade Administration, told POLITICO. "Scalability in the linkages and trust in your fellow regulators, and the backstop of enforcement in all jurisdictions, is really important," said Caitlin Fennessy, vice president of the International Association of Privacy Professionals. Fans: Brazil and the United Kingdom are among the countries keen to sign up. Skeptics: EU officials aren't fans of the APEC structure, even making clear that those protections weren't good enough in Europe's separate privacy agreement with Japan. UKRAINE FRONTS FIGHTING INTENSIFIES AHEAD OF RUSSIA'S MAY 9 MILITARY CELEBRATIONS: Seeking to deny Moscow opportunities to showcase victories at its annual May 9 Victory Day celebration, which commemorates the 1945 defeat of the Nazis, Ukrainians have intensified their efforts in the northeast of the country. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials claim Russian forces are "stealing their grain en masse" and exporting it to Russia. That risks hunger in the areas where the grain has been stolen, but may in fact see more grain getting out of the conflict zone to other food insecure regions of the world, helping to fund Russia's war. THE WESTERN FOOT SOLDIERS OF RUSSIA'S PROPAGANDA MACHINE The hashtag #IStandWithRussia has often been driven by bots and inauthentic actors in recent weeks, but at least some of this pro-Vladimir Putin material was created in the West by those sympathetic to Moscow's attacks on Ukraine, reports POLITICO's Mark Scott. Case in point: An Australian man who claims to have started the #IStandWithRussia campaign back in 2014 and racked up 1.3 million views of his YouTube videos that have peddled Kremlin talking points since it first sliced off Crimea from Ukraine almost a decade ago. Researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank discovered this Sydney-based individual had 14 separate Facebook accounts, pages and groups — including names like The West United for Russia — that pumped out a constant thread of pro-Moscow posts. "He's a central node amid a suite of [social media] channels,'' said Moustafa Ayad, an ISD researcher. "He's set up a bunch of brands and outlets that are aligned with Russian state media or push out Russian state media tropes." On top of his Facebook activity, he has a years-old active Twitter account, at least two Telegram channels and three YouTube channels. There are policy implications to this grassroots support for Putin from people across the West. So far, policymakers have focused on hitting Russian state media, either via sanctions or algorithm changes. But by working across different platforms, in a coordinated way, this Australian has sidestepped those efforts to give Putin exactly what he wants: a foothold in the West from which he can push his propaganda directly into people's smartphones.   DON'T MISS CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO's new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. CHECK OUT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE.     GLOBETROTTERS FLIGHT ATTENDANT UNION REQUESTS ALCOHOL SERVICE LIMIT: Staff at American Airlines want economy passengers limited to two drinks per flight. BRAIN FOOD SHORT READ: Europe's Soft Power Problem: Mark Leonard, the man who wrote Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century , now argues that the EU "remains woefully ill-equipped to win over other countries through the power of attraction and persuasion. Each side in the European culture war is uniquely unappealing to billions of people around the world." LONG READ: Why Europeans Colonized America Before Africa, by Tomas Pueyo  MOVIE: Licorice Pizza. The movie isn't new, and I'm not the first to profess love for it — but I'm including it here because of its savvy oil embargo water bed subplot (you'll just have to watch) — which could hardly be better timed. Thanks to editor John Yearwood, Mark Scott, Sam Sabin and producer Hannah Farrow. SUBSCRIBE to the POLITICO newsletter family: D.C. Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook | Paris Playbook| EU Confidential | D.C. Influence | EU Influence | London Influence | Digital Bridge | China Direct | Berlin Bulletin | Living Cities   Follow us on Twitter Ryan Heath @PoliticoRyan   Follow us

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