Negotiators of the North American Free Trade Agreement should include Section 230-modeled protections for online intermediaries to encourage free speech and foster startup efforts, TechFreedom said Friday of a letter it sent with many tech groups and associations. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides liability protection for online hosts and moderators of user-generated content. “Without those protections, even the biggest tech companies would be discouraged from empowering their users to speak freely,” TechFreedom founder Berin Szoka said. “But for startups, the potential liability would be fatal.” Others signing the letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and leaders from Mexico and Canada include the Center for Democracy and Technology and Internet Association.

China, from which Intel drew more than 20 percent of its 2017 revenue, is “one of our fastest-growing segments,” and so “we're counting on our leaders and the leaders of the world to go resolve these issues,” said CEO Brian Krzanich on a Thursday earnings call of the looming threat of U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports and the retaliatory Chinese actions that might follow (see 1803220043). “We believe in fair trade,” said Krzanich. “We believe that countries and companies need to be able to play in markets fairly and compete, and we're counting on this getting worked out. That's very important to us.” Intel’s Mobileye autonomous-vehicle “test fleet” has begun operating in Israel and “will expand to other geographies in the coming months,” said Krzanich. The fleet “fully implements” the “responsible-sensitive safety” system that Intel introduced last year, he said. “This unique system applies a formal common-sense safety seal to the vehicle's decision-making, resulting in the optimal combination of provable safety and human-like driving style.” Intel views the “winning path” to autonomous driving as a “progression” from current advanced driver-assistance systems to full autonomy, he said. “We're seeing significant momentum in the marketplace, including a recent high-volume design win for EyeQ5,” Mobileye’s fifth-generation vision-processing SoCs, with “a European premium vehicle manufacturer,” he said.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office accepted CTA’s request for Sage Chandler, vice president-international trade, to testify at the May 15 hearing in opposition to the Trump administration’s proposed 25 percent tariffs over intellectual property disputes on certain goods imported from China (see 1804050005), a CTA spokeswoman emailed us Thursday. “U.S. imports of products from China that are on the USTR proposed tariff list" include products members import, Chandler commented, posted Wednesday in docket USTR-2018-0005.

The China Chamber of International Commerce opposes the Trump administration’s imposition of 25 percent tariffs on Chinese imports (see 1803230016) and wants to send delegates from Beijing to the U.S. Trade Representative’s May 15 hearing to testify to that effect, it commented, in a filing posted Wednesday in docket USTR-2018-0005. “None of the public comments submitted by interested parties has identified any Chinese laws or regulations that mandatorily requires technology transfer, or present any real and concrete case in which the Chinese government has in practice forced transfer of technologies.”

IAB Tech Lab acquired nonprofit online identity specialist DigiTrust, the lab announced Monday, with some of its executives going to the Interactive Advertising Bureau lab (see the personals section of this publication's issue). DigiTrust will “provide additional infrastructure for the [EU General Data Protection Regulation] Transparency and Consent Framework.” The framework is an effort to enable publishers, tech vendors and advertisers to meet transparency and user choice requirements under the new EU law.

About 40 percent of American and European companies don’t expect to be in compliance with the EU’s general data protection regulation when it takes effect May 25, said a survey released Friday. McDermott Will hired the Ponemon Institute to survey 1,003 individuals (582 American and 421 European) from a variety of industries: IT, IT security, compliance, legal, data protection and privacy. Fifty-two percent of companies expect to be GDPR-compliant on or before May 25, and 8 percent were unsure.

ZTE delayed release of Q1 results due Thursday after the Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security denied export privileges to the Chinese equipment maker for seven years (see 1804170018). The delay is necessary “pending an assessment on the impacts of the activation of denial order,” the company said Wednesday. “Further announcement(s) will be made by the Company in respect of the date of the Board meeting to approve the 2018 First Quarterly Report as and when appropriate.”

Times are "very good" for audio/video retailers and integrators, said ProSource CEO David Workman in a Wednesday state of the business address in San Antonio, but "we live in a cyclical business, and times can sometimes turn." ProSource Chairman Murray Huppin, who owns Huppin’s and OneCall, said in an opening address that “tariffs and trade wars loom on the horizon.” In a news media update, Workman said strong growth projections for ProSource would be derailed by tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on electronics. “That’s probably the one wild card that none of us could predict,” he said. Dealers cited tariffs on consumer electronics leading to “massive price increases,” he said. Price increases on chipsets would likely “ripple up into virtually everything we’re selling,” he said. "China is the No. 1 point of manufacture for everything we sell.”

The Trump administration’s negotiations with Mexico on the North American Free Trade Agreement could be helpful to AT&T, which has invested big there, BTIG’s Walter Piecyk told investors Wednesday. AT&T appears to be “receiving support from the administration to improve its ability to compete with America Movil, as part of NAFTA negotiations,” Piecyk wrote. “Ironically, successful NAFTA negotiations could provide AT&T with incentive to maintain its pace of investments in Mexico rather than shifting capital to accelerate fiber deployments or its FirstNet buildout in the United States.”

The Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) denied export privileges to ZTE for seven years. Affiliated companies previously agreed to a combined civil and criminal penalty and forfeiture of $1.19 billion and a seven-year suspended denial (see 1703290058) because of sales of telecom equipment to Iran and North Korea and misleading the U.S. government. The denial, announced Monday, is because ZTE paid bonuses to employees involved in the sales and didn't reprimand them as claimed. "If the $892 million monetary penalty paid pursuant to the March 23, 2017 order, criminal plea agreement, and settlement agreement with the Department of the Treasury did not induce ZTE to ensure it was engaging with the U.S. government truthfully, an additional monetary penalty of up to roughly a third that amount ($300 million) is unlikely to lead to the company's reform," said BIS. The company didn't comment Tuesday.