Lawmakers question impact of free trade pacts on IT

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and three representatives of the U.S. IT industry Thursday called on Congress to pass free trade agreements with Singapore and Chile, but lawmakers asked whether current trade agreements were hurting the U.S. tech industry.

The deals also might handicap Congress' ability to change the much-criticized Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), one lawmaker warned.

Representatives of the trade office promoted the two proposed agreements as good for the U.S. IT industry and the economy as a whole during a hearing Thursday before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce's Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection.

Subcommittee chairman Cliff Stearns, a Republican from Florida, said the two proposals will "serve as blueprints" for future U.S. trade agreements, with the two agreements taking new approaches on e-commerce and intellectual property.

Both the Business Software Alliance and the Software and Information Industry Association urged Congress to approve the agreements quickly. Robert Holleyman, president and chief executive officer of the BSA, said the large software companies that make up the group's membership "unequivocally support" both trade agreements because they would impose tough penalties for software piracy in the two countries and would allow software and services to be delivered online without tariffs.

"In these agreements, new baselines have been set that should lead to significant market opportunities for the U.S. IT and software industries in the years ahead," Holleyman said.

Free trade agreements are designed to allow countries to trade goods and services with minimal tariffs and other barriers. Trade agreements, including the Chile and Singapore agreements, often define acceptable behavior for protecting intellectual property, defining human rights and protecting workers and the environment.

Michelle O'Neill, deputy assistant security for information technology industries at the U.S. Department of Commerce, called both agreements "ground-breaking" in their approaches to preventing tariffs on electronic commerce. Provisions in both agreements will "make the Singapore and Chile markets more predictable for U.S. (IT) and content exporters," she said.

But other lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, questioned provisions in both agreements.

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