Trump Administration 2026 “National Trade Estimate” Report Designates Other Nations’ Data Security, Privacy, and Other Digital Laws That Are Similar to U.S. Policy as Illegal Trade Barriers

On March 31, 2026, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) published the statutorily required annual National Trade Estimate (NTE) report listing trade-partner countries’ alleged illegal trade barriers.[1] The NTE, which is based in part on policies brought to USTR’s attention through private sector submissions, has been used by corporations and their lobbyists to translate their opposition to other countries’ public interest policies into an official U.S. government designation of such policies as illegal trade barriers.

During Democratic and Republican presidencies alike, the NTE lists other countries’ food safety, environmental, affordable medicine access, and other policies. Listing a policy in the NTE arms industry interests to attack an array of similar policies domestically. Digital policies were only added in 1998, when the Internet Tax Freedom Act added “barriers to United States electronic commerce” to be covered by the NTE. This opened the door for Big Tech interests to demand that U.S. government officials elevate their private peeves against digital governance policies adopted by other nations into official U.S. trade policy. In 2022, Rethink Trade published a study analyzing Big Tech submissions to the Federal Register NTE docket. ‘Digital Trade’ Doublespeak: Big Tech’s Hijack of Trade Lingo to Attack Anti-Monopoly and Competition Policies provided a guide in unguarded language to the digital oversight policies that the Big Tech lobby sought to kill.[2] The report exposed what the Big Tech lobby sought to soft pedal as their “digital trade” agenda in efforts to weaponize trade to evade accountability.

The dangerous practice of listing every corporate complaint about another country’s domestic policies in the NTE largely stopped during the Biden administration. Instead, Biden’s USTR targeted policies that discriminate against U.S. products and firms or otherwise violated trade principles. The corporate lobby was furious and attacked USTR. In 2025 and 2026, under the Trump administration, the NTE has again become a government-sponsored corporate hit list of any policy some U.S. company or lobbyist dislikes. This NTE analysis compiles key policies relating to online privacy, data security, Big Tech anti-monopoly, and other digital matters listed in the 2026 report. Notably, almost none of these policies were listed during the Biden administration.

The Trump administration’s intent to push countries on behalf of Big Tech to roll back these policies is reflected in the report’s references to Agreements on Reciprocal Trade (ARTs) that it has pressed other governments to sign, as well as in descriptions of partner countries’ commitments to repeal or weaken existing policies. The 2026 edition of this report expands its critique of other countries’ digital policies, consistent with the Trump administration’s objective of challenging foreign regulations that it views as disadvantaging Big Tech companies. The countries highlighted in bold in the list below had digital governance policies newly added to the NTE target list in the 2026 report, compared with the 2025 edition.

The 2026 NTE includes:

• At least 27 attacks to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)-style data privacy regimes: Algeria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, Ecuador, Egypt, EU, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, India, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, South Korea, Malaysia, Morocco, Norway, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Switzerland, Thailand, Türkiye, Uruguay, and Vietnam.
• At least 10 attacks on digital competition policies, such as platform-outlet bargaining codes: Australia, Brazil, Canada, EU, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, Türkiye, United Kingdom, and Vietnam.
• Criticism of the EU’s AI Act rules that provide for source-code examination.

The emphasis on criticizing digital governance policies is evident from the outset, with examples of potential trade barriers including:

• “discriminatory or burdensome barriers to cross-border data flows, discriminatory practices affecting trade in digital products, restrictions on the provision of Internet-enabled services, and other restrictive technology requirements”
• “abuse of competition laws to inhibit trade, and fairness and due process concerns by companies involved in competition investigatory and enforcement proceedings in the country”

The report’s annex provides country-by-country excerpts from the NTE report, highlighting the instances in which key digital policy measures are characterized as trade barriers. It includes:

• Requirements that cloud computing services vendors to the government or to sensitive sectors such as financial services must store certain data domestically in Bolivia, Canada, France, South Korea, Nigeria, Pakistan, and South Africa. But cloud services providers to the U.S. government have also been required to store U.S. defense-related government data in U.S. servers since 2015 with the General Services Administration proposing recently to extend that rule to further agencies.[3]
• Limits on international data transfers in 27 countries, including requirements that a specific country provide equivalent privacy protections, even though Congress enacted limits on U.S. data being transferred to certain countries in the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act passed unanimously by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2024 and enacted into law via a national security and foreign aid package.[4]
• The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which shares several similarities with proposed and enacted U.S. policies. The bipartisan American Innovation and Choice Online Act introduced in 2021 and 2023 would prohibit platform self-preferencing in online commerce, as does the DMA. Moreover, large digital platforms are already subject to DMA-like consumer protection and advertising transparency requirements under the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s regulations.[5]
• Media bargaining codes in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, which are similar to the bipartisan Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) introduced in 2021 and 2023. The JCPA would create a framework for smaller publishers to negotiate with large digital platforms for compensation for distribution of their content.[6]