US wants to prohibit data localisation, top trade official says amid looming RBI directive
Washington, Oct 13 : The US wants to prohibit data localisation to ensure that there is a free flow of information across borders, a senior Trump administration official has said, amidst reports that major American IT companies are up in arms against the latest Indian directive which kicks off next week.
Data localisation is an act of storing data on any device that is physically present within the borders of a particular country where the data was generated.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), in a circular in April, said all system providers will have to ensure that the entire data relating to payment systems operated by them are stored in a system only in India. It gave time till October 15 to comply with the mandate.
"We want to have prohibitions on data localisation to ensure that there's free flow of information, free flow of data across borders, disciplines around countries requiring companies to give up their source code, permanent ban on taxation or duties on digital transmissions," Dennis Shea, Deputy US Trade Representative and US Ambassador to the WTO, told a Washington audience on Friday.
"And by the way, South Africa and India want to rethink the current moratorium on those duties," Shea said in response to a question at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a top American think-tank.
American financial companies are believed to have approached the administration against an RBI directive which, beginning October 15, requires them to store in India any payment-related data from transactions that take place inside the country.
India has rejected their request of mirroring.
"If implemented, this policy will put an unnecessary burden on American companies and hurt consumers, who will endure higher costs and increased cybersecurity risks," Republican Strategist Andy Surabian, who is also a political adviser to Donald Trump Jr, wrote in BreitBart News this week.
"And they are planning to do all of this in spite of the unprecedented level of economic support the US has provided India over the course of decades. The Trump administration should stand up to these reckless actions, just like they have done in other situations when Americans were getting bullied and pushed around," Surabian demanded.
During his CSIS appearance, Shea did not specifically pointed out India on the data localisation issue, but made his views pretty clear where the Trump administration stands on this issue.
Shea said the US is very engaged at the multilateral issue and has a very high-ambition approach to that.
The general view is that the negotiation part of this process may begin early next year, or perhaps a ministerial statement around Davos.
Other members of the WTO, he said, have lower ambitions so "how this works out still remains to be seen," he added.
Mobile messaging platform WhatsApp has said it has built a system that stores payments-related data in India, in line with RBI's data localisation policy.
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Trump administration says its war in Iran has been 'terminated' before 60-day deadline
Washington (AP): The Trump administration is arguing that the war in Iran has already ended because of the ceasefire that began in early April, an interpretation that would allow the White House to avoid the need to seek congressional approval.
The statement furthers an argument laid out by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during testimony in the Senate earlier Thursday, when he said the ceasefire effectively paused the war. Under that rationale, the administration has not yet met the requirement mandated by a 1973 law to seek formal approval from Congress for military action that extends beyond 60 days.
A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration's position, said for purposes of that law, “the hostilities that began on Saturday, Feb 28 have terminated.” The official said the US military and Iran have not exchanged fire since the two-week ceasefire that began April 7.
While the ceasefire has since been extended, Iran maintains its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, and the US Navy is maintaining a blockade to prevent Iran's oil tankers from getting out to sea.
Under the War Powers Resolution, the law that sought to constrain a president's military powers, President Donald Trump had until Friday to seek congressional authorisation or cease fighting. The law also allows an administration to extend that deadline by 30 days.
Democrats have pushed the administration for formal approval of the Iran war, and the 60-day mark would likely have been a turning point for a swath of Republican lawmakers who backed temporary action against Tehran but insisted on congressional input for something longer.
“That deadline is not a suggestion; it is a requirement,” said Sen Susan Collins, R-Maine, who voted Thursday in favour of a measure that would end military action in Iran since Congress hadn't given its approval. She added that “further military action against Iran must have a clear mission, achievable goals, and a defined strategy for bringing the conflict to a close."
Richard Goldberg, who served as director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the National Security Council during Trump's first term, said he has recommended to administration officials to simply transition to a new operation, which he suggested could be called “Epic Passage,” a sequel to Operation Epic Fury.
That new mission, he said, “would inherently be a mission of self-defence focused on reopening the strait while reserving the right to offensive action in support of restoring freedom of navigation.”
“That to me solves it all,” added Goldberg, who is now a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank.
During testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Hegseth said it was the administration's “understanding” that the 60-day clock was on pause while the two countries were in a ceasefire.
Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel at the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program and an expert on war powers, said that interpretation would be a “sizeable extension of previous legal gamesmanship” related to the 1973 law.
“To be very, very clear and unambiguous, nothing in the text or design of the War Powers Resolution suggests that the 60-day clock can be paused or terminated,” she said.
Other presidents have argued that the military action they've taken was not intense enough or was too intermittent to qualify under the War Powers Resolution. But Trump's war in Iran would certainly not be such a case, Ebright said, adding that lawmakers need to push back against the administration on that kind of argument.
