ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ongoing dispute between the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) over the regulation of data privacy protection from the perspectives of transnational regulatory conflict and interdependence. It analyses the impact of this conflict and interdependence on the behaviour of private parties - particularly, US businesses operating in multiple jurisdictions. The chapter introduces the US and EU approaches to data privacy protection, the US focusing more on market regulation and the EU on government regulation. It addresses EU-US negotiations over data privacy protection in the context of international trade rules that potentially constrain EU and US actions, in particular, the multilateral trade liberalisation rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The chapter also addresses the impact of EU regulation on purely domestic US practices and examines the factors that permit standards to be leveraged upwards in this area.
