But Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D‐Calif.) is reportedly pushing to cut that language from the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) before Congress votes on the new trade deal. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier today that Pelosi is considering removing the liability protections for online platforms from the trade deal because including that language might make it more difficult for lawmakers to hack away at those same protections domestically.
"There are concerns in the House about enshrining the increasingly controversial...liability shield in our trade agreements, particularly at a time when Congress is considering whether changes need to be made in U.S. law," a spokesman for Pelosi told the Journal.
As I've written before, the USMCA‐as well as a new trade deal between the U.S. and Japan‐will include provisions shielding tech companies from liability for content, similar to the protections offered by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Though it's not a simple copy/paste, the trade deals effectively duplicate Section 230's promise that platforms will not be held liable for user-created content‐like videos posted to YouTube or comments made at the bottom of this article.