New FOIA Disclosure Reveals Cozy Relationship Between Big Tech and Trump’s Trade Policy Team
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Big Tech corporations and their trade associations are in constant dialogue with U.S. trade officials and are effectively driving the Trump administration’s trade policy, as evidenced by a trove of documents that Public Citizen obtained through an open records lawsuit.
By inserting binding rules into trade agreements and encouraging the use of tariffs as a coercive tool, Big Tech seeks to undermine policies in other countries that promote AI safety, platform accountability, privacy, and competition.
Last summer, Public Citizen filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for communications between Big Tech companies and staff at the office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). When USTR failed to meet its obligations under the statute, Public Citizen took legal action, launching another of our now more than 45 lawsuits against the administration.
Nearly a year later, USTR has finally started providing partial disclosures. The first tranche of emails covers only the first two months of Trump’s second term, a period that saw a frenzy of tech CEOs and their lobbyists seeking to ingratiate themselves with the new administration’s trade team. Despite the short time period, the disclosure is more than two hundred pages long.
“It’s not just the quantity of communications, it’s also their content that suggests a close relationship between the tech industry and the Trump administration,” said Melinda St. Louis, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch team. “The agenda and content being pushed by these industry groups is not neutral, but designed to benefit the profit interests of their corporate members. The pre-packaged research, academic studies, and ‘impact’ documents wrongly frame foreign regulations as harmful to both U.S. interests and the foreign country’s own economy. The privileged access tech lobby groups have to trade negotiations is particularly concerning given that the public at large and even Congress have been kept completely in the dark about the status of negotiations or the content of the reciprocal trade agreements and other framework deals before they are announced as completed.”
The tech companies that appear in the disclosure include Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Amazon Web Services, Intel, and AT&T. There are also communications from lobby groups that represent tech companies, including the Chamber of Commerce, the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), the Consumer Technology Association, the Coalition of Service Industries, and the Telecommunication Industry Association.
The communications indicate numerous and frequent meetings between tech industry groups and officials of the USTR, often timed to coincide with engagement between the U.S. and foreign governments. Big Tech lobbyists successfully suggested agenda items before meetings and requested read-outs of official discussions.
For example, a Feb 14, 2025 email from CCIA noted the upcoming visit of Korea’s trade ministers and stated, “I hope the issue we discussed can get on the agenda, and if possible, we could get a read-out of any digital-relevant discussions.” In a separate thread with Amazon regarding Korea’s “trade barriers,” the USTR’s Senior Director for Information and Communication Technology Services and Digital Trade noted she would be leaving for Korea on February 26, so moved the meeting up to February 25 to make sure they could discuss relevant issues before she left. Other countries with digital regulations in the crosshairs according to the disclosure include India, Mexico, the European Union, Kenya, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
Emails indicate that industry groups provided briefing materials, backgrounders, and “non-papers” — informal documents without attribution. USTR did not just receive information passively from these groups, but actively sought it as well. USTR staff requested industry position papers shortly after meeting foreign officials to use in their push against foreign digital regulations. There is evidence that at least twice, a USTR staffer requested an industry group’s communications with foreign regulators giving assurances to the industry group that USTR was pressuring the foreign government on their behalf.
And, USTR proactively reached out to tech industry groups to inform them of opportunities to influence policy, for instance, flagging notices for comments. All this in addition to the direct line that representatives of these companies and industry groups have as cleared advisors to the USTR’s Industry Trade Advisory Committee, where communications are classified.
The result is a U.S. government and Big Tech collaboration to push back against digital economy regulations across the world. Public Citizen has thoroughly documented the Trump administration’s practice of regurgitating Big Tech demands as official U.S. trade policy.
This disclosure is likely only the tip of the iceberg.
The tranche of documents only covers a two-month period. Several of the email threads are truncated without conclusion. Others indicate various ‘off the record’ conversations and personal meetings between industry officials and the USTR. And this disclosure consists solely of emails, not the other communications requested by Public Citizen, such as meeting notes, texts, and Signal messages.
Public Citizen will continue to update as further disclosures roll in.