Polarization and USMCA: The Tech, The Bad, and The Trade Deal

How do you negotiate a trade deal when one side views the other not as a partner, but as an evil empire? In Sergio Leone’s iconic spaghetti western film with Clint Eastwood, "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly," the main characters hate each other, but at the same time they need each other. They are both hunting for a fortune in stolen gold, but they only possess incomplete information. One knows the name of the cemetery where the gold is buried; the other is the only one who has the data of where the exact grave with the money is located. If they kill each other, the secret dies with them. 

As you can see, this plot is very similar to the USMCA negotiation. More than a neighborhood, we are brothers, and like all siblings, we love each other. Of course, we get a little angry when things aren’t the way we want them to be. It becomes even more complicated when we reach Chapter 19 (digital commerce) in the conversation.

Recently, some Mexican NGOs spoke about the risks related to the actual regulation of platforms but not about the benefits. They qualified the tech companies as a “digital empire” or an “oligopolistic group of digital platforms” that “control social networks, websites, video game platforms, and also digital sexual exploitation markets, including the commonly called pornographic pages and spaces for exchanging or monetizing intimate content without consent.” 

Of course, all of us must work to prevent and avoid digital violence. But can they prove that all the big platforms are looking for the same awful and negligent purposes? Is it true that the issue is with the owners and not the consumers, the authorities, and other agents like poverty and violence?

This has become a constant problem when we speak about anything: polarization has reached us in so many ways that it has become standard and normal to disparage or attack our partners without any filter.

While NAFTA began as a dream, USMCA seems to be a nightmare. For more than two decades, citizens from the participating North America countries have lived many of the promises of globalization: better products, different prices, more jobs, clear rulings, as well as the implementation of standards and minimums through legislation.  

But NAFTA, and now USMCA, has become one of the favorite punching bags for politicians in the region. The same effect occurs in digital culture. It is easier to call a treaty or a platform the “worst ever decision” rather than protect immigrants or children. Certainly, it is more attractive to punish with fines or even prohibit some activities than assuming the undone work in education.

How can we speak about digital violence if we are the first ones to speak with biases about the principal digital actors? Are they that bad, or is it a better political option to attack them to show empowerment?

In Mexico, we are getting very used to polarization, as the research shows. For example, in the most recent Digital News Report elaborated by Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford, we can see that, unlike other nations, like the United States or Canada, which like getting news from sources that don't support a particular point of view (53% and 47%, respectively), Mexico prefers getting news from sources that “share your point of view” (37%). Maybe, we just love to have “the truth in our hands.”   

Chapter 19 of the USMCA establishes the framework for digital trade, and it resumes safe harbor principles to protect freedom of speech. This right must be as wide as possible, but that doesn’t mean that it must be absolute. We need to improve the "duty of care" standards and implement transparent and rapid notice-and-takedown mechanisms for egregious abuse. 

We are facing a big challenge as well as a great opportunity. The treaty could hold intermediaries accountable for user safety without incentivizing them to over-censor legitimate free speech. But we can only get that provision if we can sit down and seriously — and calmly — talk to each other without dissonance. 

However, just like those gunslingers, all sides hold a necessary piece of the puzzle. Civil society and lawmakers legitimately demand an online environment free of abuse, while tech companies control the very infrastructure required to make that a reality without stalling the digital economy. If stakeholders arrive at the table only to fire rhetorical bullets and dismantle their "enemy," the dialogue collapses, and no one gets the gold: a safe, fair, and functional digital trade framework.