WASHINGTON, D.C. – ACT | The App Association is encouraged by the announcement from the United States and the Republic of Korea reaffirming the Korea Strategic Trade and Investment deal, as set out in the joint fact sheet released on November 13, 2025. The announcement signals meaningful intent from both governments to reduce digital non-tariff barriers, ensure that online platform regulations do not discriminate against U.S. companies, safeguard cross-border data transfers, and promote fair, predictable rules that support innovation and healthy competition in the digital economy.
“The power of a truly open and competitive digital economy is the ability for our members, whether they are in Korea, the United States, or elsewhere, to establish and maintain trusted relationships with customers anywhere in the world,” said Morgan Reed, president of ACT | The App Association. “Discriminatory online platform regulations threaten to limit competition, reduce consumer choice, and stifle innovation. This U.S.–Korea agreement represents a renewed commitment to prioritize eliminating non-tariff barriers, including in the context of regulating online platforms, which countless small businesses rely on to reach a global market, grow, and create jobs.”
The U.S.–Korea agreement reflects progress on these commitments, including:
- An assurance that U.S. companies “are not discriminated against and do not face unnecessary barriers” related to digital services, including network usage fees and online platform regulations.
- A pledge to “facilitate cross-border transfer of data,” including personal data, and to support a permanent moratorium on customs duties for electronic transmissions at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
- Broader commitments to address non-tariff barriers across sectors, including competition policy and intellectual property.
- Commitments by Korea to provide additional procedural fairness provisions in competition proceedings, including the recognition of attorney-client privilege.
ACT will continue to work with policymakers in the Republic of Korea and the United States to turn these commitments into reality. Specifically, Korea should reconsider proposals that would introduce prescriptive, ex-ante platform regulations, modeled on the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Among other concerns, this agreement should signal the need to end ex ante forms of online platform regulation and disproportionate competition enforcement in Korea. The Korean government should recognize that these trade commitments are fundamentally incompatible with such efforts as the “Online Platform Act” being pushed forward by the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC), which would grant the agency sweeping discretion to pre-designate and target companies with a so-called “superior bargaining position”. Advancing this kind of proposal would undermine the very goals of the Korea Strategic Trade and Investment deal. Such measures would disproportionately burden and increase compliance costs for SMEs in both the United States and Korea.
Two recent economic analyses have quantified the negative economic effects of these proposals:
- According to the Southeast Asia Public Policy Institute’s analysis, adoption of DMA style regulation would burden micro, small, and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs) in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation region with increased $2.15 billion in compliance costs annually.
- Analysis by the Competere Foundation found an estimated loss of $469 billion in economic output over a 10-year period.
When trade frameworks are focused on combating demonstrated systemic harms, reinforcing nondiscriminatory treatment, prohibiting arbitrary fees, and protecting the movement of data that powers the modern digital economy, small companies gain the certainty they need to experiment and invest, and to compete with even the largest companies.
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