My Globe and Mail op-ed last week argued that the U.S. is pursuing a two-pronged strategy on cross-border data: the CLOUD Act to assert legal access wherever data sits, and trade policy to pressure countries that try to move their data beyond that reach. This post provides the underlying data that the op-ed could not fit with a fuller picture of what the 2026 U.S. National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers (NTE) actually says about cloud computing and data sovereignty across the globe.
Post Tagged with: "data sovereignty"
Heads They Win, Tails We Lose: What Lies Behind the U.S. Trade Battle For Control over Data
My Globe and Mail op-ed begins by noting that the Trump administration’s emphasis on tariffs continues to garner headlines, but a more consequential trade battle over data control is playing out with far less public attention. Last week, the U.S. released its annual report on trade barriers and for the first time, Canada was listed alongside dozens of other countries for seeking greater control over its own data. The message is clear: When countries enact laws that restrict where data is stored and who can access that information, the U.S. treats them as a trade threat.
Commentary: Ensuring the Sovereignty and Security of Canadian Health Data
Following on our earlier Globe and Mail op-ed and Law Bytes podcast, I am pleased to co-author a commentary on health data sovereignty and security with Kumanan Wilson and Mari Teitelbaum in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The key points identified in the piece:
- Canada’s population-based health data are an invaluable resource that provide economic and health system opportunities through the development of health-related artificial intelligence algorithms.
- Concerns about the potential monetary value of these data, access by the United States for surveillance purposes, and how data often reside on cloud servers owned by US companies, make it essential that Canada redouble efforts to ensure the security and sovereignty of data.
- We suggest a multipronged approach that includes encrypting health data by design, requiring health data be hosted on Canadian soil (data localization), inserting a blocking statute into privacy laws, and investing in the development of Canadian sovereign cloud servers to host health data.
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