; Whereas many individuals and families, especially in rural and Tribal communities, struggle to participate in the digital economy due to lack of access to a reliable and affordable internet connection; Whereas new developments in technology must be deployed with consideration to the unique access challenges of rural, urban, underserved, and vulnerable communities; Whereas digital trade has the power to help level the playing field and uplift those in traditionally unrepresented or underrepresented communities; Whereas countries have negotiated international rules governing digital trade in various bilateral and plurilateral agreements, but those rules remain fragmented, and no multilateral agreement on digital trade exists within the World Trade Organization; Whereas a patchwork of plurilateral digital trade agreements in the Indo-Pacific region have emerged, creating a set of rules on digital governance to which the United States is not a party; Whereas Congress recognizes the need for agreements on digital trade, as indicated by its support for a robust digital trade chapter in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement; Whereas other countries are operating under their own digital rules, some of which are contrary to democratic values shared by the United States and many of its allies and partners; Whereas these countries are attempting to advance their own digital rules on a global scale; Whereas certain practices, such as overly restrictive data localization requirements and limitations on cross border data flows that do not achieve legitimate public policy objectives, intellectual property rights infringement, policies which make market access contingent on forced technology transfers or voluntary transfers subject to coercive terms, web filtering, economic espionage, cybercrime exposure, and state-directed theft of trade secrets, are just some examples of the plethora of nontariff barriers to digital trade that have emerged around the globe