very warm welcome to all of you taking part in this session. Yeah, my name is Roland Kulbka. I'm working for Transform Europe, which is the political think tank of the European Left Party, as Rosa Luxemburg-Schrift was a member of our network. So, Alexa was kind of like me. I'm extremely glad to be here with you because we are here for book launch of the latest book of Deborah James. I've waited for this book a long time. I can promise you Deborah is very well known, honestly worldwide, because Deborah is not only the director of international programs at the center of economic policy research. The think tank I have come across long time ago, but especially for my point of view, Deborah is single-handedly organizing the our world is not the sale network, and hence has a tremendous impact and incredible knowledge on the international trade sphere. Deborah will start our debate today, but Deborah will not be the only speaker. After Deborah, Kamati Caroline Mugala will take over for five to eight minutes. Kamati is the executive secretary of the East African Trade Union Confederation, so basically the sister organization of the DTUC, also based here in Brussels. Afterwards Rashmi Bangar, senior economic affairs officer with a division on globalization and development strategies in Angkor to take over. I might say that this division is basically the most important part in my understanding inside the whole United Nations organization, so thanks a lot already now for being here with us Rashmi. Last, not least, Kate Leppen will take the floor. She's the regional secretary, Asia and Pacific for the public services international trade union. Kate promised to finish also our discussion with taking up the judgment of today, which came out from the European court. On the Apple decision, but we'll take up this later. Just one more information. I would be very glad if you let us know who you are. Please also write down if you have questions. What we'll do is, Deborah will now open with 15-20 minutes presenting the book, which we can download for free and which we can also order already now with the Rosa Luxemburg-Schriftung office in Brussels. Afterwards, please just a few technical questions, so not political discussion. We will come to this later, I promise you, and we will then have the other these short interventions, also always with the short technical questions of understanding, and we will have a general debate afterwards. Okay, so far from my side, thanks for being here, Deborah, please. Thank you. Thank you so much to the Rosa Luxemburg-Schriftung for publishing the paper and for organizing this seminar, and to roll on and to all of my excellent co-panelists. Welcome everyone. Thank you for being here today. Just to say our World is Not for Sale is a global network of about 250 groups from the global north and south from about 50 different countries, and we oppose the current model of corporate globalization, and we work together for a democratic, sustainable, and fair multilateral trading system. So today I'm going to share with you three major points. We're here to talk about the digital trade rules that the Big Tech Corporations are pushing in the WTO and in other forum. So I'm going to talk about the origin of the talks. Why are we having this discussion? I'll give you a brief status update, and then I'm going to focus on the implication of the rules. So a couple of basic points. Technology obviously can stimulate prosperity and development. It can bring us closer together and help build sustainable livelihoods. We are not anti-technology, but it can also constrain development. It can exacerbate inequalities, and it can destroy jobs and ways of life. So whether countries, workers, and consumers everywhere will benefit from new technology, or whether the benefits will only accrue to a teeny tiny minority, will be determined by the rules which set the playing field for how digitalization will evolve over time. And the important point is who is setting those rules? Now one of the best investments that corporations can make is to change the rules under which they operate so that they can extract greater profits from the economy while preventing their competitors from having a level playing field. Now powerful corporations have long used their surplus profits to invest in the undemocratic practice of trade policymaking to use trade agreements to lock in rules, promoting their rights to make profits, while limiting government's ability to regulate them in the public interest, often through policies that they could not have advanced through democratic channels. The World Trade Organization, as we know, is the global rulemaking body on international trade, and big tech and other corporations operating in transport, logistics, telecoms, finance, agribusiness, industrial, many other sectors. Our lobbying governments to use the WTO to liberalize the digitalization that is currently transforming the global economy, and particularly the governance of today's most valuable resource, which is data. Now many would agree that new corporations are urgent. These would include, for example, new antitrust rules that would promote fair competition across digitally affected sectors. It would include new tax rules to ensure that tech corporations begin to pay their fair share. It would include new labor rules to address the exploitation of employees as contractors. New fairness rules to ensure that proponents of artificial intelligence are not exacerbating discrimination and bias, and new rules governing privacy and security. However, what corporations are seeking by using trade treaties is actually the opposite of the type of rules that we need. So trade agreements give rights to expand trade. These rights are exercised by corporations, that's who trade, but they place no additional responsibilities on corporations. So at the same time, these rules discipline national regulation of corporations. They literally place handcuffs on legislative and regulatory bodies, which are exercising their democratic rights to regulate foreign corporations operating on domestic soil. So far from accomplishing the widely popular reforms of the tech sector, which are urgently needed, trade rules inherently give corporations more rights and inherently place limits on public regulation that should be expanded in the sector. And that is a point that is rarely discussed. We discussed the pros and cons of trade agreements. So in reality, Big Tech has proposed the rules in order to consolidate its exploitative business model. And I find this the clearest way of explaining what people sometimes think are like technical aspects of the rules, because you all know their business model. So what does it include? It includes gaining rights to access markets globally. They want to be around the world. They want to lock in deregulation and they want to evade and prevent future regulation. They want to access an unlimited supply of cheap labor that has been stripped of its rights. They want to expand their power through monopolies. They want to avoid payment of taxes. And now the newest aspect, they want to be able to extract and control personal, social, and business data around the world. Data is the lifeblood of the digital economy. So whichever firms dominate artificial intelligence in their sectors by virtue of their big data set will dominate their industries. Artificial intelligence depends on the massively large sets of big data to train the machines learning to make the decisions. Think about the fact that U.S.-based Big Tech, transnational corporations, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft, are now five of the six largest corporations in the world. Okay? Their valuation in terms of market capitalization is so high because they are data collectors and investors know the value of the data for future profits. Even corporations that have failed to turn a profit, they can still garner venture capital if their business model appears to put them in a position to collect data in a way that sets them up to dominate their industry. That's why having rules on digitalization or digital trade or e-commerce is not the same as having binding global rules on the entire digital economy written by Big Tech for its own benefit. These are not e-commerce rules. They go far beyond e-commerce and would result in the liberalization of all aspects of the economy. They really represent a new constitution for the digitally economy of the future. Now ensuring that technology is deployed to serve the well-being of humanity and the planet and shared prosperity, this is what we want. We want technology for good. Now this will only be possible if we exercise our democratic rights and prevent Big Tech from rigging the rules of the future global economy to increase their own profit and control. So what's a quick status update? Well in 2016, the Obama administration first proposed rules on digital trade in the WTO after hiring a corporate tech lobbyist under the guise of e-commerce talks in the WTO. We in our world as not for sale had seen these rules in the Trade and Services Agreement, the TISA, which we were successful in derailing together with Public Services International just before Trump's inauguration. Now these rules were already in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, although the text at the time wasn't wasn't public. So it's in the TPP, they also currently exist in the EU Japan FTA and the US Japan FTA and in the renegotiated NAFTA, the so-called US Mexico Canada Agreement. Okay, so those are the agreements where it already exists. Now in the US introduced in 2016, proponents tried to get all 164 members to agree to a new mandate to negotiate binding rules on digital trade and to permanently push aside the development agenda, which has been pending since 1995. Okay, but developing countries resisted the imposition of this new corporate agenda and they blocked the new mandate at the last WTO ministerial, which was in Buenos Aires in December 2017. However, a group of 76 countries launched talks among themselves to bring about a binding agreement on digital trade in the WTO. Now these nations are constantly lobbying and pressuring other developing countries that are not participating also to join their ranks. Their aim is to conclude an agreement involving as many countries as possible, as well as to secure a mandate for talks among members of the WTO, all the members by the time of the next ministerial conference. So that was supposed to occur last month, but it's been postponed at this time as you know. So let's talk about what are some of the implications of the rules for working people. Okay, now one of the characteristics of the contemporary global economy is that while the productivity of workers and small businesses has increased over time, obviously, large corporations continually take more and more than their share because, as I mentioned, they have used their surplus profits to intervene in the policymaking process to design the market to distribute more of the gains to themselves. Now this process has been facilitated by digitalization and the proposed rules are intended to lock in and accelerate that appropriation of the productivity of workers. So the proposed digital trade rules, as we know, they were written by big tech corporate lawyers to further entrench rules to maximize their profits and power. Now these proponents of the rules are some of the worst violators of labor rights in the world and they should not be the ones writing a new constitution for the digital economy. Okay, the digital trade rules are intended to decimate decent jobs and increase the precarity of labor because that's part of their business model. The most important goal for big tech and the digital trade negotiations is to gain rights to cross-border data flows or what they often call free flow of information or free flow of data, but it's not free. It's the corporatization and privatization of the data claiming a property right by the harvester or miner of the data over and above the rights of the producer of the data or the community from when the data comes. They want to ban governments from being able to regulate cross-border data transfers. Now at this point most people don't properly grasp the value of data meaning that individuals and governments are too easily allowing it to be collected and indiscriminately and transferred outside their countries by transnational corporations. Now data is the primary resource of the future globally coming and people and governments are increasingly calling for this resource to be utilized for the public good. Now the only way to bring about a rebalancing of power globally away from capital and giant corporations and the extremely rich towards people who work is to promote state and workers and community ownership of society's most important resources and that includes data. So proposals within the WTO to give big tech the right to collect, hoard, store, transfer across borders, sell and control the use of data to ban countries from being able to require even a copy of data to be stored domestically or to use local servers in the storage of the data. These would severely constrain the ability to ensure that working people can harness the benefits of digitalization and workers in industry and transport and health education even in agriculture. I have more details in the book. Each of these sectors will be affected. Public sector workers will be especially affected because the increase in privatization that Kate is going to discuss. The proposals also fail to address specific issues for workers of platformization including the right to organize and in fact they include no proposals or demands from labor. The proposed bans on government's ability to require the disclosure of source code which is what feeds AI would make regulating digital bias at work more difficult. In fact banning mandatory source code disclosure is really a brazen attempt by big tech to evade future legal accountability for discrimination and bias under the guise of protecting intellectual property. Okay. Proposed bans on the regulation of corporate data transfer would severely constrain workers' privacy over their own data and the proposals would entrench gender inequalities but proponents are using pinkwashing saying it's great for women entrepreneurs. Okay so we have a section on that. My colleague Kamate Mugala from the East African Trade Union Confederation will discuss more of these issues so I'm going to leave it there for now. Now digitalization these rules are also a huge disaster for development. Okay digital liberalization will likely facilitate more imports of products and services with a high digital content into rather than exports from developing countries. Now the proponents are disguising their proposals in the Trojan horse of being able to unleash development through the power of micro, small and medium enterprises using e-commerce. But if digital trade is expanded, liberalized without first improving the productive capacities in developing countries, developing countries will simply be opening up their economies to even more imports which will destroy jobs and informalize them and decimate MSMEs. The digital divide is being narrowed, that's good news, but the economic digital divide is actually growing and the network effects will continue to exacerbate it unless countries engage in smart digitalization. Now the rules also include a proposed ban on government's ability to require technology transfer. This would very much harm unhamp our digitalization in developing countries. Now developing countries have proposed many many pro development strategies historically in the WTO and other trade agreements, but that agenda is being pushed aside in favor of the corporate digital agenda that's only interesting for a few countries. Now there's a lot more analysis of the potential implications of digital trade for development in the paper. I don't have time to go through but my colleague Rashmi is going to elaborate some of these points in her presentation. Now there's also some more issues. It concluded the rules would mandate that commercial interests, Trump privacy and data protection.  The rules would give corporations virtually unlimited rights to transfer data to whatever jurisdiction they please in data havens and would prioritize commercial rights over consumer protections and citizens rights to privacy in ways that cannot be fixed in the WTO. So digital corporations that I think have shown a complete disregard for consumer protection, complete disregard for citizen privacy rights should not be trusted to self-regulate. Okay now there's some in the WTO some acknowledgement of the need for some data privacy protections in the digital trade talks particularly by Europe but the US insists that these provisions are voluntary for corporations. Okay allowing data flows to be governed by a trade tribunal with subject fundamental rights to corporate trade interests that's the bottom line. Now there's a lot of really important issues for taxation. We know that avoiding taxes is part of the fundamental business model of these corporations and you know workers already pay a disproportionate and increasing share of the global tax burden but the digital players are taking advantage of the mobility and intangibility of digital goods and services to further avoid tax obligations. So these rules would promote tax evasion and the loss of public necessary public revenue. There are at least seven different provisions that would allow digital corporations to severely limit their tax liabilities both reducing tariffs and structuring the economy in a way that they would avoid corporate taxes and both Kate and Rashmi are going to touch on this so I'm going to leave it at there at this point but we have to consider how important tariff revenue is for developing countries in particular because they are still primarily dependent on primary commodity exports and it's it's still really important to use for many other reasons. Global tax reform is a priority even in the rich countries club of OECD but the proposed digital trade rules would actually undermine these efforts. Now the Trump administration as I'm sure you've heard has been criticizing countries such as France for implementing digital services taxes saying that they should wait for the global resolution through the OECD but the US just abandoned the global digital services tax discussions at the OECD so that's obviously going nowhere. Just a few more points I need to wrap up the most obvious implication of the erosion of corporations share of contributions to the tax base is the reduction of decent quality accessible public services which are essential to a thriving and cohesive society so public services are very much at risk that Kate will talk about. Now there's just two final things I want to mention there are two important visionary concepts that must be developed to counter this idea of the inevitability of the privatization and corporatization of data. The fact that creation of the right of rules. One of them is data as a public good. Now think instead of Uber keeping the massive data collects about how people move about cities why couldn't towns require that the anonymized data is shared with municipal transport planners as a condition of Uber's use of the public road infrastructure for its business profits. Just one small example likewise the gathering of health data during the coronavirus can lead to further privatization of health and further enrichment of health care corporations profits or it can be used to resolve the pandemic and the answer here lies in the concept of data as a public good and the need for communities who produce data to have the rights to the economic value of that data and Kate will be discussing this further and the last concept I want to mention is just the other big big alternative concept of this corporatization is digital industrialization. So to ensure shared prosperity from digitalization all countries must be able to formulate and implement digital industrialization policies that ensure equitable control and governance of their key resources particularly data similar to the policies used in previous waves of industrialization and I have to emphasize this is important for developing countries it's been developed a lot of the concept for developing countries it's really important also in developed countries okay that we don't just let private corporations run off with all the benefits and so Rashmi Banga is going to discuss some of that she's a world expert on digital industrialization so I will leave it to her to explain more of those issues. So sorry for the rushed analysis but with I'm just opening up some of the main proposed rules I will now turn it over to my co-panelists to discuss some of the impacts as they see them for their communities thank you so much. Thanks a lot Deborah I've seen no technical questions right now of understanding if there's any really question of abbreviation or whatever please let us know otherwise I will now give the floor to Kamati focusing on my understanding workers rights please wonderful thanks please start. Thank you I don't know if you can see my screen is it is it working? Yeah it's wonderful yeah I can see okay thank you so my intervention will basically focus on the digital trade rules negotiations and how it will impact workers and workers rights. I think from just Deborah's analysis it clearly shows that there are major concerns on digital economy and as Deborah said we are not against digital technology but we are looking at digital technology that you know will benefit all that's including implementing workers. So I'm going to just share with you comments from the international trade union organization in terms of our work around what we are seeing as trade unions in terms of how this is going to affect labor. So Deborah already mentioned the issue around rolling back on decent work or decent work deficit and increasing precarious work and this is specifically seen from the kind of you know jobs that are being introduced digitally the kind of jobs that we are getting we are now getting things like self-employed agency work and we very well know that this kind of employment often you know reduces the workers rights you know they like you know predictable working times it means you know any time for you is work time issues around social protection issues around fair wages issues around organizing of the platform workers and we know the role that collective bargaining agreement actually plays in ensuring that it protects workers rights and it becomes much difficult for the workers that are working digitally or what we call gig economy or platform economy. The other issue that also Deborah alluded to is making enforcement of local labor laws more difficult. Take an example of Uber you have no you know you have you have no physical presence in a particular country so when we have issues around labor laws being broken and we have to call you to book it becomes very difficult for those who have industrial court or you know taking you to court to be answerable if you do not have physical presence in that particular country. The other thing that I would also like to look at is the issue around you know the whole concept of eroding workers rights by necessity. Digital transformation the digital transformation that society is undergoing is testing some of those you know hard-won rights about what constitutes a worker and what rights and protection they deserve and these have been you know clearly also mentioned when I talked about you know an increase in in precarious work. We have challenges to brought about by algorithmic and transparency. Algorithm is good you know flying the plane I think 40 percent of the time you're on the flight it's algorithm at play it's being used during you know stock trades now we are seeing a lot of innovation around self-drive vehicle so it's a good thing but you know you see when it comes to you know labor and workers we are also seeing this being used in terms of making decision on who to you know hire after a job interview we are looking at in terms of enforcement whether an offender will you know repeat it we are looking at each deciding what kind of social care provisions a service user needs to be given so as we enter increasingly sensitive areas of as it enters in sensitive areas of our lives like deciding if I get a job or I get fired we need to have meaningful accountability and I think Deborah already mentioned that issues around accountability for those who create and you know deploy this kind of mechanism and decision making system because it's a system that is going to make a decision so how do we account for that and why is the transparency in all this especially on decision that have significant impact on an individual the other area is expanding market access right for digital and this also goes hand in hand with my next point which is increase of power of big tech over workers there's there's quite a revolution going on within government and I think some of you might know or might have heard of what you call government that this could actually transform the nature of public services and who delivers them but when you look at some of the proposals that are being put on the table and the people that are actually making this kind of rules and regulation it's big tech companies that are getting into this discussion so where does you know the small medium companies falling in terms of the decisions that are being put and this means this is increasing the power of the big tech and particularly coming from our organization in terms of over workers right introduction of data gathering technology its analysis and use has also been disputed and a delicate balance between a worker and employer and that's the problem why I'm saying it's very hard for you to organize or you know get into a collective bargaining agreement because you have to have a clear employer and worker relationship where Uber is saying they are not my workers but they are earning money from these drivers so that becomes a big challenge you know we're talking about extending of you know surveillance beyond your working hours where your company can actually track your movement and you know get you to work hours beyond you know working area the data is used to benefit the company actually and the provision around source code threatens to allow employers to hide behind automated decision-making system thereby reducing their accountability this point is linked to the previous points also there's also it also threaten it's all there was also threatening countries domestic industries future by requiring a free transfer of data I think in the in the chat box someone asked what it means for African continent where we do not have the infrastructure all we have you know under developing infrastructure around technology how is this you know affected and I'm sorry I'm using Uber as an example but I think it's it's I don't know if it's a best bad practice example in terms of trying to take the point home Uber is a transportation company that is currently valued at you know billions of dollars yet it does not own any cars or employ any employees and it is using as as as Deborah mentioned capital and infrastructure to to make up for gathering and analyzing an immense volume of data on people driver and how cars and how they move around the city and interact with the partners so you can imagine an African country or a developing country that does not have you know proper digital laws rules and regulation to be able to monitor exactly or to hold companies like you know amazon uh uber accountable to what they are doing in that in that country so for me I think we need that policy space to put in place rules and regulation that will actually protect our working people back home there's also the you know a preference being given to those transnational companies the big tech companies of a micro and medium enterprises as Deborah's introduction already mentioned it's the big tech that are sitting on the table and as we know when you look at you know SME is they account for over 45 percent of job employment you know globally and when you come you know back home I come from East Africa micro small and medium enterprises actually account for over 50 60 percent of of jobs in in our economy and contribute you know quite a chunk of the national income but we are seeing that these rules are actually going to benefit more the big transnational companies and and the big tech companies over our small SMEs last but not least I thought it would be important for me to also talk about agriculture and digital trade and why am I seeing agriculture and digital trade most of the developing countries and Africa as a continent agriculture is the backbone of the economy and we are seeing today the prop the prop prospect of worthless farm stuff by robots we are seeing automation I think we have had countries that have really fought hard to prevent automation in the tea sector because that's a labor intensive sector so when you bring automation you can imagine the number of people that are going to use their jobs and we already have new jobs that are being brought on by by by technology in agriculture but but at a huge cost it means you have to have money to be able to invest in such kind of you know you know capital intensive agriculture so it means you look at that peasant farmer and you're looking at that small-scale farmer at home whose primary agriculture is to feed his family and to field you know feed into the country's food system then they are put at a disadvantage in terms of of losing their livelihood and and their small income that they are come they are getting from from agriculture so I think it's it's very important as as we move forward in terms of looking at how these rules will impact agriculture as as I mentioned this is also to answer the guy who asked what it means for for for the for the African continent so I think it's it's also important for us to flag out this and see how that is going to affect agriculture and and and innovation around agriculture in Africa and and in developing country so I would just stop at that and I think we'll have more discussions in the in the in the in the chat or when the question and answer session starts thank you yeah committee thanks a lot for your presentation I have following the chat I don't see any technical specific questions of understanding so I would immediately give the floor now to rush me on industrial policy and please rush me stay with eight minutes thanks thank you very much my compliments to Deborah for her excellent book which brings together all the key issues in digital economy as well as highlights and analyzes the the restrictive digital rules that are being negotiated and pushed by the developed countries one of the issues discussed in the book is how digital digital industrialization can be adversely impacted by the digital rules a commonly commonly known as the e-commerce rules which as Deborah has highlighted go much beyond e-commerce rules and there are more than 70 countries negotiating these rules in the joint statement initiative now so it becomes very important because these rules will make the digital divide the existing digital divide permanent if if these rules are multilateralized and if they are made if they are agreed to by the countries so just if you go to the next slide please if you look at what is the digital divide I want to highlight that the countries have never been have never felt the digital divide so severely as in this pandemic because we know that countries which are digitally advanced they will they will have less impact of less economic impact of the lockdowns they will recover faster so this digital divide is going to contribute to the existing global inequalities in new ways and if it is not bridged it will accentuate the existing and accelerate the global inequalities at an accelerating rate next slide please so what the digital divide will lead to is loss in existing trade competitiveness reshoring of manufacturing and associated job losses rising dependence on north for digital goods services and technologies growing e-commerce now we have to also understand that e-commerce platforms are two-way platforms so if you're connecting your SMEs to e-commerce platform you're also exposing your domestic market access to foreign sellers so all these things will make you know will will make digital divide contribute to the existing global inequalities now how did this digital divide emerge the way this digital divide emerged was that because of digital revolution the digital content in industrial production started increasing and developed countries or the big digital platforms were able to add digital content or much higher digital content in their in all stages of production for example in the pre-production stage higher use of digital services and data analytics was done like cloud computing big data analytics in the production stage digital technologies were used like robotics 3d printing and digital it services in the post production stage in the distributive services again digital content was increased by using e-commerce platform so this is how the digital revolution led to digitalization of industrial production so the digital content increased in every stage of the production and as a result what happened was that the digital divide grew so when Deborah says that the digital divide is narrowing it is actually just the ICT infrastructure divide which is narrowing but the digital content in the industrial production is increasing in developed countries and actually falling in the developing countries and empirical evidences if you look at the value added by computer programming in manufacturing exports now I just want to highlight its manufacturing exports so it really shows your export competitiveness and what we find is that in developed countries this value added by computer programming is rising steadily while it is actually falling in the period 2007 to 2014 in the develop in the developing countries can we go to the next slide please so now the digital divide has become a multi-layered concept it includes ICT infrastructure divide digital skills divide data divide and digital technology divide so we need comprehensive digital industrial policies to bridge the digital divide so ICT infrastructure is just the first layer of digital infrastructure to this we have to add digital skill layer and data infrastructure now data infrastructure includes your data centers cloud computing infrastructure and data processing so that you can extract data intelligence from your data and then that data intelligence is used in your digital technologies or you can use it to build more digital technology so this is the entire pyramid which I think Deborah has also explained in her book this entire pyramid is what digital infrastructure is and this pyramid explains what multi-layered concept digital divide has now become next please so if we if we see what are the steps for digital industrialization that needs to be taken by developing countries I would say four primary steps needs to be taken first is to build ICT infrastructure now this is the the necessary step but not a sufficient step to bridge digital divide second step would be to build data infrastructure to build data infrastructure what you need to do is to first own your data and declare data sovereignty which means that this data that is generated within the national boundaries should be governed under the national law or someone asked if we can give some good examples Rwanda has data sovereignty policy I think it's available on internet you can just type Rwanda's digital the data sovereignty policy it is a very good policy they declare that the data should be governed under their own national law but if you look at the e-commerce rules they they are talking about free flow of cross border data now if that happens countries cannot then say that this data belongs to us and you cannot take it out of our national boundaries without our permission you cannot do that the second step that the the second thing to build data infrastructure would be to build build the capacity to store your data and to process your data for that you need data centers and you need you need clouds so that you can process your data and bring out the knowledge information and intelligence from your name from the data but again e-commerce laws talk rules talk about data localization policies they do not want governments to have data localization policies which means that the governments can never ask foreign firms to store and process the data that they collect from their country within their national boundaries but I would say that the countries who have data localization policies like Indonesia they are emerging as data hubs in the region a lot of digital platforms are shifting their data centers from Singapore to Indonesia and processing their data in Indonesia because Indonesia has a data localization policy the next step would be to build digital skills and digital technologies now when initially when the industrialization happened the way governments build up their technology and the skills was to ask the foreign firms to have joint ventures with their domestic firms to have technology transfer agreements so that there is some technology spillovers some learning of the skills by the domestic firms now we are not talking about digital technology transfers or building digital skills or asking the digital platforms that when you enter what is it what domestic linkages are you going to have with our country we are not doing that and I think that is very important instead what the rules e-commerce rules are doing they are saying that the governments cannot ask the foreign firms to share their source code source code is nothing but algorithms they are digital technologies so they are just going in the opposite direction they're asking governments who can never ask foreign firms to share their digital technologies then how will the digital the developing countries bridge the digital divide especially the technology divide or the skills divide and the last step which is not the last step in terms of building your digital industrialization but what I'm going to talk about is the digital infant industry protection we always had infant industry protection and one one of the most simple and effective policy tool in the hands of the government for doing this was tariffs but today we have a WTO moratorium on custom duties on electronic transmission now how is that relevant because we know that data and software are used by all digital technologies but data and software are also electronically transmitted now if you ask governments not to regulate data and software and you cannot put custom duties on import of software that means that you can never get protection to your budding digital industry also in the coming of you know digital technologies like 3d printing a foreign firm can have a 3d printer in your country import duty-free software and 3d print any manufactured product that you are your manufacturing in your country it could be footwear it could be clothes it can be anything that means all your negotiated tariffs with respect to your clothes your footwear or whatever you have negotiated in GAT becomes irrelevant whatever flexibilities you have in your GATs again become irrelevant because let's say you have not taken any commitments in the construction sector and you don't want construction services to come in but here you have a foreign firm coming with a 3d printer and building a whole house 3d printing a whole house how do you stop that so next slide please so it becomes very important for developing countries to think about their digital industrialization design digital industrial policies for building digital infrastructure and bridging the growing digital divide digital divide is not just ICT infrastructure divide it is data divide it is skill divide and it is digital technology divide and it is also important to retain policy space to do that in all trade agreements whether it is multilateral whether it is plurilateral or regional or bilateral but in terms of you know what what can the small countries do especially in Africa if they do not have the capacity to process and store their own data we have an UNCTAD publication on south south regional digital cooperation it is very important for Africa to look at it because this suggests a very progressive digital cooperation agenda which can help regional integration and which can provide regional support to small countries so that the concept over here is that in our regional let's say in a rec let's say ESC or commissar all member countries declare data sovereignty that they have right over their data but they agree to share their data within the region and then they can talk about and they can pull in their financial and human resources to have data centers clouds to process their own data to have their regional e-commerce platforms regional payment systems so that all the SMEs within that region are able to benefit from the data intelligence which is extracted from their own data so next slide please so I would like to conclude here and in the next slide I have the links of all the papers that I have drawn from and again thank you Deborah you've covered all these issues very well in the book and I would suggest I think it is a must read for all the policymakers thank you a lot I just want to add as from my position as a European I would like to have our industrial ministers listen to this because we have exactly the same problem so thanks a lot definitely cool yeah so now Kate it's your floor please please thanks very much Roland and thanks to Deborah and also to Rosa Luxemburg for inviting me I do have a presentation and the system is telling me that the host must allow me to screen share but so if you could give me that and I'll just start to introduce it so let me just introduce first PSI I think I can see many people on the on this webinar that are familiar with PSI but we are the global union to that represents workers who deliver public services whether they be public workers employed by the government or those in the private sector who should be employed by the government and we've been involved with trade campaigning for many years now for a number of reasons because trade rules I think it's been very well explained are rules that have been established for the in the interests of global corporations rather than workers but also because they those trade rules have a significant impact on public services so PSI is from global union that is committed both to protecting the rights of workers but also to advancing quality public services for all and in terms of the digital trade rules well I think it's particularly clear that this is an additional effort to ensure that public services become part of the private sector's cash cow and restrict policy making that could could redistribute both access to to the wealth that they're monopolising but also to major public goods like knowledge or data and as I think you've probably many people have heard data being described as the new oil in that of course it is the most profitable resource but in many ways I think data is more than the new oil because of course oil it's great if we can have that in the public hands and we can all then benefit from it which hasn't been the case in in most countries and it's kind of a good model to show that countries that have been able to keep that resource in public hands have then been able to have the revenue required for to build their quality public services but it is more than that because data of course is not just a revenue source it's it's it's fundamental to everything that we do whether it be digital data or whether it be other forms of data for proper public service planning and right now of course we can all see that health the need for for for public data on health is is more evident than ever and for that data to not to be monopolised for it to be shared across countries is going to be key to responding to the pandemic but all sorts of other health data in order to to deliver public health services is required and when that gets monopolised of course it skews both the responses all sorts of public health planning but all data is required across every public service whether it be how we use our energy where should we locate that energy that energy for example that we very much need in planning for climate we need it we need it to look at issues around how climate is changing and where and planning we need it for for building infrastructure planning for infrastructure for looking at demographics and so forth uh clearly it's needed for security all our security um you know whether that be in public public services in security or across border security we've seen issues of the way that data has been used in in the delivery of social protection whether that be um collecting people's data and just distributing then social welfare and the challenges that that's that's happened when that's held by the private sector and of course in tax itself in addition to the issues that I'll cover in a moment about the tax avoidance of these big big tech companies we need data we need data for tax and that's part of our biggest problem is that a lot of tax information is hidden and I think it's been mentioned as well of course that data is key to democracy greeners but let me keep going um the not sure if I've lost control of my screen or if something's happening to my butt and let me try and continue so with all of those uh that are clear that we obviously need that data what happens when when big corporations get hold of our data we've seen across a number of most recently across a number of countries so the big tech companies are in all these fields we might think of them as purely delivering tech services on the internet or phones we might think of the way that they provide cloud services but in fact increasingly the big tech companies main revenue source is often in public procurement or contracts with governments um Microsoft for example has more than has had more than 3 000 contracts just in security with governments security and law enforcement it has the largest contract ever for a US security which has um been 10 billion dollars a number of governments are almost outsourcing their entire municipal government in through the smart cities program so um some smart cities are cities that are often planned with big tech companies and every element of the city is is designed to collect data and that data is said to be helpful in in uh planning but often it's actually about it's a it's a method for data mining that's held then in the hands of private corporations and a lot of these example these sample smart cities are almost without governance without public sector governance in India there's been a commitment to try and produce 100 smart cities and these smart cities can be seen with you know towering uh buildings and impressive uh internal internal to the building's impressive kind of digitalized security and responsive um technology but have no public infrastructure find people without access to water or access to uh basic needs energy and so forth um so the data and monopolies that we currently have make those make the option for for governments to produce public data almost impossible um okay i've gone on to my next slide i'm trying to keep up with the slide and what a very clear area is that uh big tech has taken over public health um we can we know that health that our health services are increasingly privatized across countries there's almost no country now where there's no element for uh health and in our in the both in the e-commerce rules but in other provisions in the trade agreements this turns them into a service that then is subject to the um rules i saw a question there saying can't some of these rules uh have exceptions have exceptions for things like public health and that does appear but it almost can never be um successfully used utilized because governments have already allowed uh big tech but also big pharma another health another um corporations to operate in these fields and therefore it's a a service that has been already financialized and is subject to the rules and if you think about some of the tech technology that's in health um that would need data to be collected and that is currently being financialized you can imagine the risks associated with having rules that mean that government can't intervene some of those are clear things like um the the actual technology that's collecting data from um from our hospital services whether that be ultrasounds that are now produced by samsung whether that be um pacemakers that people have or medical imaging data but it's also in things like wearable sensors samsung again samsung is one of the companies that's decided that their growth is actually in health digital health um products right and they've invested billions in growing that sector along with others and created alliances with other big tech companies to make that happen and one of those things is to they would like to produce all the sensor data whether that be your Fitbit or or um other parts of data that might go into phones or other other services that might have employees wear them and it can collect data from what is your temperature you know you can collect data about your blood pressure as well as the kind of things people are familiar with and have that universally uh no matter which company is using the sensor have that data mining as a single source of information that samsung would hold and you can imagine how valuable that is to them how much how they how much they can financialize that level of data that might end up being you know a large percentage of people across the the globes daily health um information uh i think if i'll go to the next slide okay yeah Kate you have to uh tell us when we have to switch right yes sorry sorry okay if you could go to the next slide sorry um all right okay so i just wanted to very quickly touch on the issues of um tax avoidance that is another way that big tech is undermining our public services so first of all of course and then Debra's touched on more of this earlier that um uh they are both a provider of public services but they're also undermining the capacity of governments to regulate uh public services or to compete with them actually in introducing the kind of uh or or introduce a government led data uh provider but also they are undermining our public services by denying uh governments the the revenue that they need and they are notoriously some of the largest tax evaders and you can see here that the amount that they have in tax havens but the the rules the both the rules in terms of the e-commerce chapter the tpp or the proposed in the wto but also other provisions in the trade agreements make it even more difficult to pursue these big big data corporations for their taxes one of course if they don't have a local presence then um data companies are already familiar with choosing their jurisdictions most of them are registered in tax havens uh whether that be Delaware like amazon or um in ireland as apple has done and those jurisdictions are increasingly also data havens so there's a correlation between secrecy jurisdictions that allow you to hide your profits and those that where you would like to hold your data because it wouldn't be subject to the kind of uh laws that perhaps your wanderer or other countries might be introducing um and i think there is some responses to this so apple the the comment earlier that the decision today i think about the next slide is about apple um there are some responses to this i think apple of course was taken the eu pursued apple for the for it's a 15 billion dollars worth of tax evasion and today they've just the apple has won the appeal and this shows us actually that we need a different response i think if we shouldn't be disheartened by this loss because actually it shows that the eu's not currently able to pursue tax evaders and that we need an entire entirely different response one of which of course is that we can't have these trade agreements which protect them but also there's other responses like coming together with real multilateral cooperation and producing um digital profits tax rules which should go ahead i think with some governments initially and then hopefully pursuing them i just put this here because i wanted to remind everybody of the fact that this is the leaked memo that during one of the leaks i think might have been the Panama papers some of apple's internal memos were released and you can see what these big companies are seeking this was a memo that went around to to law firms in different jurisdictions asking about whether that jurisdiction would be suitable when apple had to move some of its holdings out of island because of the changes to their tax rule so first of all of course they're asking for um whether they will whether they will be able to avoid tax importantly for them secondly though is will anything be public will they have to disclose anything about the company and so the need for secrecy and the third is will there is there any democracy and the need for to have to be guaranteed that there will be not no democracy no opposition party no potential for changing government and so i think we can see from these the the the nature of these companies seeking both secrecy and democracy um i very briefly i think we're going to touch on but we can perhaps discuss it later and Deborah's already touched on this it's the next slide and i won't go through it a lot but i just did want to point out that um there are solutions and and i think it's been mentioned by others because as as data is a public good the PSI we've commissioned to pay some work on this and it's down there um the publication by Paminda Singh working with us on this idea that we can actually do governance of data differently i think right now is the time to do it because the pandemic is opening up opportunities to rethink the social contract um and i think it's a you know it's an exciting concept that really we all have to get our heads around a complete shift in what we've been taught about property and about the rights of corporations to financialize absolutely everything but it would be both an advance in um access you know in in data industrialization has been mentioned and making the capacity of what data can actually do for us uh much more broadly applied and improving our public services so i'll leave it there because i think i might have gone over but um thanks again thanks Kate uh thanks a lot uh once again uh to the participants all the presentations you saw and the wonderful book of Deborah uh all available on Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Brussels webpage we will copy the link again um in the chat so now unfortunately because we are not as we are supposed to be in one room but we are somewhere um i have to pick up out of the many many questions uh and uh there has been to start obviously it's uh the honor is to Deborah uh to start with uh answering some questions there two questions uh Deborah i would like to pose to you uh which came from the participants first question is uh very to the point it's basically the question what can Bangladesh do to restrict Amazon and the second question is something which is so interesting for myself i have to admit uh are there any models for collective and democratic ownership of data which already exist from regions of technical models from some countries where we could look at you could start with these two questions um yeah thanks Deborah sure um thank you so much for the questions and thanks to everyone for your lively participation and to my co-panelists so in response to the question about Bangladesh i mean i think that there are things that you can do for example the government could pass laws stating that all data that amazon collects have to be available to the national government to have to be available for local startups have to stay within the country for example you could have uh local startups be supported um to be competing uh with amazon the issue is that you're never going to have a small country be able to create a competitor to a first mover that's been involved that's had the advantages of first mover status that's been collecting big data from all over the world for a long time that got um tax subsidies by not being taxed for many many years um so you're not really going to be able to compete with amazon so much but there is a way to sort of hem them in and say we want to set these rules now so that amazon is not able to exploit the local community as much for example they're increasing the amount of fees that they charge um to um uh companies that use their platform um and you can have rules about that why couldn't you have rules managing that why couldn't you have rules uh mandating that they have to pay taxes okay so these are you know things you can do but again those rules anything you would be able to do as a local uh country or as a small country would be constrained like the rules that we're talking about that we're explaining are intended to prevent you from being able to do that um just really quickly on the good examples too there are a few um i haven't studied it widely but there are there is uh the city of barcelona there's a lot of documentation about them using uh developing itself as a smart city but for the benefit of uh the public um but i also like to turn this this a little bit on its head because a lot of the investment in the technologies that we use today that has been privatized actually were invented with public money okay so if we think about the fact that the internet is an invention uh under the auspices of the u.s. military okay gps was invented by the c i so a lot of these things and we do it all the time in the u.s. where we invest public money um in creating new technologies and then we allow the the private sector to get all the benefits from it and even to charge the public sector exorbitant amounts okay so there's different ways um uh to look at that uh in terms of of trying to find some some positive alternatives in order to make sure that there's some public benefit it'll allow me um there was a couple of other questions i think that that um i just wanted to be able to touch on for a second there's a lot about you know what's changed under covid okay and so how are things different and particularly with result with regards to monopolization there were several questions about that um and i think it's important for us to understand how the rules interact with this really important issue of monopolization and competition policy so now nearly all digital trade now is dominated by a few global players from the united states and china and this is really changing the way that commerce is done and it's reorganizing an economic activity and leading really to digital domination okay so governments around the world in north and south are really rethinking competition policy and investigating anti-competitive practices of the same corporations that are the inventors of the proposed digital trade rules okay so if we look at the fact that google and facebook have already faced deep fines from the eu from the uh germany from france from india australia are all investigating anti-competitive behavior and lawbreaking i will tell you in the united states we have unprecedented investigation from the house from the senate from several regulatory agencies under trump and from states attorneys general looking into the um monopolistic practices now what's happened under covid is that it has dramatically expanded so you've seen the big behemoth buying up local corporations we just had uber buy a competitive um food delivery service called postmates we see as was mentioned microsoft trying to really elaborate its digital surveillance including surveillance of workers this is really burgeoning under some more and more people work at home um and the bigger corporations just had more cash available to them because they're so profitable because of the rules that they are able to make bigger and bigger profits and this gets back to the main issue then if you look at the fact that the big tech corporations have vastly expanded their market power and their revenues and profits under covid okay under the economic crisis at the same time you have amazon workers striking to be allowed to wash their hands at work striking to be allowed to wear protective personal protective equipment you know having labor i mean the abominable labor conditions that's not because those amazon workers lack skills okay this is not a skills issue and i really think it's important for us to stop falling into that trap talk about that we need to talk about the rules the reason why amazon has increased its market power and why the workers are being shafted under covid is because the way the market is designed with the influence of those corporations to extract and we need to push back against that so uh you know it's also i mean just think about the fact monopolization wise these digital trade proposals are extremely premature rulemaking okay we have had 2 000 years of agriculture in europe and and europe does not believe in free trade and agriculture okay we want regulated agriculture okay so why should we have with in just a few years of digitalization coming on suddenly a rush to say oh we need to have rules we need to have rules we need rules but they're different you know we need a new economic agenda um for um for development of of industries as brashmi pointed out but we need a new way of sort of governing um these industries so you know i just also there was uh if you don't mind uh one last question i wanted to answer and i want to hear from my co-panelist on some of the some of the other really great questions but there's really a lot um you know aside from we've talked a lot about the economic impacts today okay but there is a lot of safety and security impacts and there's questions raised about this in terms of the fact that there are proposals in the digital trade negotiations for the corporations to extend their influence in domestic regulatory processes okay so they actually want to encourage governments to avoid unnecessary regulation of electronic transaction and so if you have a situation in which one country feels that a measure or a regulation of another country inhibited the first country's right the corporation of their country's right to make a profit and they want to um uh you know to challenge that measure the defense in country would have to defend its measure as transparent objective reasonable impartial necessary and legitimate to a trade tribunal okay and this this type of rules exceptions have been used as what's question about exceptions they've been used as successful only once in 44 times in the wto so this is not the way to go okay so we know for example that banning mandatory source flow disclosure would make us very unsafe uh we need constant monitoring by regulatory agencies of the source algorithms that are increasingly making decisions in our lives in things like the internet of things televisions heart monitors the corporations who make these do not invest enough um in um safety and security cyber security and they have that's why we had so many hacking scandals over the many years so this is really problematic um and and the last thing i'll just mention uh on these issues from some of the questions was that the proposals are are really also they contain measures that would really make the platforms wholesale immunity of the platforms for the harm caused by their business operations now what do i mean by that under u.s law the largest corporations in the history of the world are shielded from liability from the harm that is caused by their business practices okay they are unaccountable to legal frameworks that apply to their counterparts okay this is obviously a competition issue as well now facebook for example is not legally obligated to remove libelous or false allegations from its news feed the way that traditional news media are okay now in recent years to give a really incredible example women who are survivors of human trafficking have challenged the immunity of the platforms that they're being trafficked on for facilitating and making a profit off of their misery but we have this law and it's called section 230 in the united states and it indemnifies for platforms what wouldn't have been illegal if it had occurred in print media okay this law is extremely controversial in the united states for various reasons but the u.s advocates for the export of this law through digital trade rules that's not about e-commerce okay that is about making sure that these corporations don't have to respect your privacy don't have to respect the law and continue to you know build their power and profit by exploiting workers uh and you know these issues are all for democratic debate you know they're not for just uh having these trade rules written uh behind our backs so thank you uh for all those questions i'll stop there incredible uh the last example um thanks for this um uh kamati rashmi kate if you would like to pick up uh um questions you have seen uh just please get inside but before this i have a question i would like to extend to kamati there has been one question i would like to a little bit it was about the uh automotivization uh with let's say artificial intelligence in the tea production in east africa uh at the very end of your presentation you mentioned uh the danger the challenge of losses uh we might have to expect in the agriculture sector and because this is such a fundamental question for humanity i would like to ask you if you have some more thoughts about this uh what data economy uh might mean for um agricultural production if you have to say something afterwards please just i hope uh do you want me to take the question first the floor first okay uh the question that was put on the chat i think it's a very interesting question how can small countries uh bargain with big uh big digital giants like amazon and also the question about the bangladesh and amazon right now there is no law uh or no um digital rule which tells the countries that they cannot own their data they cannot declare sovereign rights over the data so the first step the countries need to do whether they are small or big is to declare sovereign rights over their data then amazon cannot be an owner of your data so if amazon is doing something with your data it has to take permission and it has to see what the national law is now second i have shared in the chat the link to the paper on south south digital cooperation which really looks into this issue of small countries if they do not have the capacity what should be the way forward for them it should be a regional digital cooperation so if you cannot bargain alone with the digital giants it should be a regional uh a regional rule that prevails or let's say the the within the region there are certain set of rules which are put in place so that each country does not have to negotiate separately with the big giants and i also want to say i know we have very limited time but i also want to say that in the wto developing countries are always defensive we are looking at the rules that are being negotiated and we are saying that this is going to adversely impact us why can't we be more offensive and why can't we say that small countries on their own cannot dictate terms with big digital giants so let us have a multilateral rule to regulate these big digital companies there should be a multilateral rule that countries have to own their data and any foreign firm that enters a country needs to share the data that the digital platform collects with the government and with with the uh the other firm so this is the concept of data being a public good i think these are the kind of rules that we need to govern the digital economy and not the rules that are currently being negotiated at the wto thank you okay thank you very much um in terms of uh the question posed to me on the tea production i think one of the best case study for me has been kenya where they stopped them you know the large scale introduction of tea plucking machines but also this was due to the fact that uh all the tea plantations in kenya are organized under a very strong trade union so there was a lot of uh lobbying from the trade union they went to court in terms of how that will affect um the country economically in terms of employment and the people that uh have been employed but in terms of just agricultural and digital trade i think it's uh the restructuring that is going on how it is going on by whom and our food is being produced and and distributed and how this is actually affecting or going to affect the small scale food production system that we we know exist particularly from from developing countries but also just uh looking at the fact that the advance of big tech companies into agriculture and the wider food system presents a number of challenges to those trying to make a living and feed themselves from small scale uh agriculture so this means that you know agri tech business will continue to benefit most at the expense of of small scale farmer and we are seeing this in terms of uh a seed seed production in terms of you know a lot of research work in in in in in seed technology and all that it's the big tech that have money to actually invest um there was another question that was was directly posed to me in terms of civil society and i think one of one of the person who raised a question i think it's annual and and the question has been answered by dr rashmin in terms of you know the kind of you know weak governments that already exist in in in in in in our most of the developing country to be able to effectively engage in such kind of of of negotiations so the civil society therefore presents a pressure points and and and not just pressure points in terms of just you know talking about it but also offering alternative and i think uh that's what debora is is also doing that's what we are doing uh in in in our world is not for sale network in terms of offering alternative you know proposals to the texts that are being negotiated and also just pointing out to those negative uh or negative texts that will affect as negatively and bringing them to book because you know having worked so many years with debora and other civil society sometimes the government officials will tell you can you please you know give us an alternative to what is being proposed or can you tell us more about what you're talking about so for me i think civil society we is actually central to ensuring that uh we we we are not uh we we get the best out of out of this so i think that's that's just that but also in terms of sorry in agriculture i think one of one of the proposals that the trade unions are putting on the table is the issue around just transition and this also applies when it comes to you know digital trade digitalization e-commerce the kind of loss of jobs that are going to happen can we have some kind of just transition um in in terms of of of supporting the people that are going to to lose their jobs thank you thanks a lot kamati uh kate there has been one question i would like especially to post to you because i think it's it's kind of affecting directly the public services ranger uh post the question in the light of covid-19 digital technology has got a massive push um would you say this strengthen or weakens the case for regulating the digital corporations so i read it in a sense uh covid-19 change of the rules of the games right um well yeah i think that there's been obvious opportunities for big tech uh during this time and some of that is just no increasing their monopolies and obviously they've been increasing their profits but also again they have been contracted to to deliver some of the tech services for governments and pushed out public sector including things like the covid tracing app amazon was has been contracted to develop some of the tracing apps um and that for example with the australian government amazon won the contract the contract is with amazon registered in delaware which of course is a tax haven and the the data will be stored offshore so a lot of the public is concerned about the individual privacy around that and of course that's an issue and people have been i guess hesitant sometimes to use those apps because of that reason but very little discussion about the potential for amazon um to to uh financialize the metadata that they are collecting that the government may have access to when there's an individual need to use the app but the overall metadata i think is something that that is not discussed um and the need for for that kind of public health access and then of course the other element that i think that was asked is about the tax and we are in other in other crises in in history where there's been some companies profiting from a crisis like war there has been an excess profits tax and i think that that is something that we should also discuss now is that these are the companies that are profiting they're already evading tax and now is the time i think when we see that um they're not contributing together but i also do think that this is the time that covered does give us the chance to talk about new ways of governance and because governments have had to step in the economy already and do things that are contrary to trade agreements many governments have done things that breach rules and have had to do it and see that a crisis requires that it's the state that has to act to stop a crisis um whether that be taking over private sector health whether it be um that they're trying to develop new manufacturing in their own countries of PPE and and securing supply chains that really are trade rule breaches they have seen that the rules that have been set up by corporations haven't aren't going to keep us safe so now is the time for us to be saying these rules don't work we've got to rethink those rules and think of new ways of of developing public goods that we need for our public health and i think people are turning towards the state actually to say how do we protect our public health in the future and one way is our data and that's very clear so i think there's an opportunity for us there and i think see other people mentioning the need for us all to come together um trade union civil society experts to do that and create this push now for something different thanks a lot kate this would be possible to be a perfect last words for for meeting absolutely brilliant thanks a lot for that but as we are here because debora has published the book i would like to give uh closing remarks to debora unfortunately please believe me i would like to stay with you longer here but we are all busy and we need to stop on time i'm already a little bit over time i apologize for this so please debora last words before i close uh well thank you so much everyone who's joined us thank you so much to the professor lexenberg to transform europe for hosting us today i really appreciate the wealth of knowledge um my co-panelists and i hope that you all follow up with some of the links that have been shared i'm sorry we didn't get to all the questions but if you write us we will be happy to take those issues up and dialogue more with you further um i just think you know we are in this unprecedented crisis right now and we have a lot of uncertainty and rapid transformation happening we need our governments to be able to respond more proactively to emerging problems and this touches on what kate just mentioned about the fact that a lot of countries are looking at the trade uh commitments that they've made in the past and saying whoa that needs to be changed you know we need to be able to source manufacturing closer to home of personal protective equipment we need to break patent monopolies that the us has on uh medicines that have enabled a gigantic transformation of wealth from the south to the north from consumers to corporations over the last history of since the inception of trips rules in the wto we need public interest concerns about economic rights racial justice and fairness human civil and political rights to be the focus of conversations about rewriting the rules governing data and technology now if we go in the way we are there's no reason to think that technology is going to uh uh bridge the digital divide to to make uh to reduce inequality inequality has been graciously exacerbated not just by digitalization but the rules under which it has uh developed and technology corporations are seeking to make that permanent and accelerate that vast chasm of inequality happening within countries and between countries they want to make sure that that's a permanent system so we have to be active in contesting their rulemaking now as we mentioned there are some agreements that already exist so if your country is a member of the trans specific partnership you already have these rules if you're part of us mca um if you are eu with japan you already have them but that doesn't mean that they have to be uh exported to the whole world because they are much harder to change if they are agreed in the wto between the eu and japan you can change it when you finally decide that it makes no sense for your countries but we need to not happen in the wto and we need your help and your participation we need many many more people to get involved in this uh we're all seeing the ways that that uh the increasing monopolization exploitation of workers nonpayment of taxes is is just having super negative impacts on all of us as working people and we need to make a change and we need to make sure that our activities that we're advocating for if they're economic justice racial justice you know data privacy whatever that they include also paying attention to the rules that are being developed globally and we have uh lots of room for growth within our world it's not for sale for more groups to join to participate in this fight to get more active in pressuring their governments to say whoa this is a big tech thing here you know five years ago everybody thought that facebook was cool okay that's not the case anymore we want to put a stop to their their monopolization and exploitation of data their infringement on our democratic processes they're you know messing up of our elections there's just so many problems so we see this now and we need to make a change and we need to get the rules that we need worker rights more taxation anti-monopoly and stop them from into implementing the rules that they want which will really have such a devastating impact on our lives for the future because once you get these rules in the wto forget ever changing them that is a problem thank you so much i look forward to working with all of you on these issues no need for me to add anything just to give my greatest thank you to all the four speakers please i recommend to all the participants read Deborah's books and also so last book this book now and please also look at the our world is not for sale uh webpage with excellent uh uh articles there so yeah we all have to join because all different sectors we are working in are confronted by this attack on the rules so whatever you are working in if you're interested in climate anti-racism trade union rights uh you have to be a little bit an expert on trade and this book will help you so thanks a lot uh for all of you uh i hope to see you soon again in the real world uh thanks a lot to Deborah thanks to Kate thanks