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Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính issued Directive 38/CĐ-TTg on 5 May 2026, mobilising a cross-ministerial enforcement campaign against intellectual property infringement running 7–30 May 2026 with a 31 May reporting deadline. The directive explicitly responds to the USTR 2026 Special 301 designation of Vietnam as a Priority Foreign Country — the first such designation in eleven years — which triggers a statutory 30-day window for USTR to decide whether to open a Section 301 investigation. Ministries of Public Security, Industry and Trade (Market Surveillance), Information and Communications, and Culture are mobilised for coordinated raids targeting counterfeit-goods exporters, pirated-content platforms, and software-copyright violators, with the Prime Minister signalling enforcement will be permanent rather than a one-off campaign.

The Office of the United States Trade Representative released the 2026 Special 301 Report on 30 April 2026, designating Vietnam as a Priority Foreign Country (PFC) — the most severe category under Section 182 of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. § 2242). This is the first PFC designation since Ukraine held the status from 2013 through 2015, a gap of approximately 11 years. The PFC designation triggers a statutory 30-day window (expiring ~30 May 2026) within which USTR must decide whether to initiate a Section 301 investigation under 19 U.S.C. § 2412(b)(2)(A), which could lead to tariffs, withdrawal of trade benefits, or other Section 301 enforcement remedies against Vietnam. Separately, the EU was added to the Watch List for the first time, citing AI training-data, geographical-indications, and customs-enforcement concerns.

Taiwan's Legislative Yuan passed the Artificial Intelligence Basic Act (人工智慧基本法) on third reading on 23 December 2025, and President Lai Ching-te promulgated the 20-article statute on 14 January 2026, bringing it into force immediately. The Act designates the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) as the central AI-policy competent authority and codifies seven governance principles — sustainability and well-being, human autonomy, privacy protection and data governance, cybersecurity and safety, transparency and explainability, fairness and non-discrimination, and accountability — that apply to all public-sector AI procurement and high-risk sectoral applications. The statute establishes a statutory foundation for the Taiwan AI Action Plan 2.0, mandates an Executive Yuan National AI Strategy Committee, and provides authority for sector-specific implementing regulations by FSC, NCC, MOHW, and MOTC across finance, telecoms, medical, and autonomous-vehicle AI within a two-year window. As the first national AI governance statute in the Greater China region and the third globally after the EU AI Act and South Korea's AI Basic Act, it frames regulatory expectations for the companies at the heart of the global AI hardware supply chain — TSMC, NVIDIA ODM partners, and advanced-packaging incumbents — that are headquartered or operate substantially in Taiwan.

On 10 December 2025 the National Assembly of Vietnam adopted Law No. 134/2025/QH15 on Artificial Intelligence (8 chapters, 35 articles), Vietnam's first dedicated AI statutory framework and one of the first comprehensive horizontal AI laws in Southeast Asia. The law establishes a three-tier risk-based regulatory architecture (high / medium / low) for the research, development, provision, deployment, and use of AI systems; defines the rights and obligations of providers, deployers, importers, distributors, and users; and mandates state oversight via the Ministry of Information & Communications and Ministry of Science & Technology. Prohibited acts include systematic deception, manipulation of human perception, generation of fake content endangering national security, exploitation of vulnerable populations, and obstruction of human-supervision mechanisms. The law applies to Vietnamese agencies, organizations, and individuals as well as foreign organizations and individuals involved in AI-related activities in Vietnam, taking effect 1 March 2026 with 12-18 month transition windows for existing systems depending on sector.

Vietnam's National Assembly passed Law on Cybersecurity No. 116/2025/QH15 on 10 December 2025 (434 of 443 deputies in favour), effective 1 July 2026. The law supersedes both the 2018 Cybersecurity Law (Law 24/2018/QH14) and the 2015 Law on Cyber Information Security, consolidating cybersecurity, cyber-information-security, and network-information-security into a unified Ministry of Public Security-led framework. It retains data-localization obligations for foreign digital-service providers handling personal data, user-generated content, and relationship graphs of Vietnamese users (minimum 24-month retention), introduces 6-hour urgent / 24-hour standard content take-down windows on MPS request, expressly prohibits AI/deepfake forgery of images, voices, and videos for illegal purposes, and mandates child-safety platform measures.

Germany's transposition of EU Directive 2022/2555 (NIS2), enacted as the "Gesetz zur Umsetzung der NIS-2-Richtlinie und zur Regelung wesentlicher Grundzüge des Informationssicherheitsmanagements in der Bundesverwaltung." Bundestag passage 13 November 2025; Bundesrat approval 21 November 2025; published as BGBl. I 2025 Nr. 301 on 5 December 2025; entered into force 6 December 2025. The statute designates the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI) as the central national supervisory authority over an estimated 29,500 covered entities across 18 critical and important sectors, introduces a mandatory 24h initial / 72h detailed / 1-month final cyber-incident reporting cascade, establishes board-level personal liability for senior management, and applies to SME critical- infrastructure suppliers — with no transitional grace period from entry into force.

Italy enacted Legge 23 settembre 2025, n. 132 — "Disposizioni e deleghe al Governo in materia di intelligenza artificiale" — published in Gazzetta Ufficiale Serie Generale n. 223 of 25 September 2025 (atto 25G00143) and entered into force on 10 October 2025. The statute makes Italy the first EU member state to enact a comprehensive national AI law complementing Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (EU AI Act), designating AgID (Agency for Digital Italy) and ACN (National Cybersecurity Agency) as national oversight authorities under Presidency-of-the-Council-of-Ministers coordination. It sets sectoral rules for healthcare, labour, intellectual professions, public administration and the judiciary; authorises up to €1 billion in state-backed venture capital (via CDP Venture Capital) for AI, cybersecurity and telecoms; creates criminal penalties of up to five years' imprisonment for harmful deepfakes; mandates parental consent for under-14 users; and delegates secondary legislation to the Government across multiple domains.

Canada announced on 29 June 2025 that it would rescind the Digital Services Tax Act (originally enacted 20 June 2024) to revive US-Canada trade negotiations after President Trump suspended talks on 27 June, citing the 3% DST on large digital-services revenues as a discriminatory measure against US technology firms. The Canada Revenue Agency halted collection effective 30 June 2025, and legislation to retroactively repeal the Act back to its June 2024 enactment date is to follow, with refunds — plus interest at the standard corporate tax refund rate — to be paid to affected taxpayers including US technology majors.

On 26 June 2025 President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed four acts constituting Nigeria's most comprehensive fiscal overhaul in decades: the Nigeria Tax Act 2025 (NTA), Nigeria Tax Administration Act 2025 (NTAA), Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Act 2025, and Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Act 2025. The NTA consolidates and repeals six core statutes — CITA, PITA, PPTA, VAT Act, CGT Act, and Stamp Duties Act — into a single unified code effective 1 January 2026, while the NTAA standardises assessment, filing, and enforcement procedures across all federal taxes. The two establishment acts restructure the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) into the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) with a broadened mandate and create an empowered Joint Revenue Board to coordinate federal-state fiscal relations.

The National Assembly of Vietnam passed the Personal Data Protection Law (Luật Bảo vệ dữ liệu cá nhân), Law No. 91/2025/QH15, on 26 June 2025; it enters into force on 1 January 2026. The PDPL is Vietnam's first statutory (rather than decree-level) personal-data-protection framework, elevating the prior Decree 13/2023/ND-CP (PDPD) regime into a 5-chapter, 39-article primary statute and adding revenue-based administrative penalties of up to 5% of prior-year annual revenue for cross-border data-transfer violations and up to 10x illegal gains for unlawful data trading. The law is implemented by Decree 356/2025/ND-CP (issued 31 December 2025, effective 1 January 2026) and applies extraterritorially to foreign organisations offering services to or processing the personal data of Vietnam residents.

Indonesia's Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs (Kemkomdigi) promulgated Permenkomdigi No. 5/2025 on 25 March 2025 as the implementing regulation under Government Regulation PP 71/2019 governing Public-Scope Electronic System Operators (PSE Lingkup Publik), defined as operators running electronic systems for government institutions or critical public services. The regulation mandates registration, data classification by risk level (low/medium/ high/strategic) with corresponding domestic storage and processing requirements, content- moderation governance, and access-blocking mechanisms for prohibited electronic information. All public-scope PSEs must achieve compliance by 25 March 2026, with non-compliant operators subject to progressive administrative sanctions under Articles 100-series ranging from written warnings to access disconnection (pemutusan akses) and removal from official registries.

The Republic of Korea's National Assembly passed the Framework Act on the Development of Artificial Intelligence and the Establishment of a Foundation for Trustworthiness ("AI Basic Act") in plenary session on 26 December 2024, consolidating 19 separate AI bills tabled in the 22nd National Assembly. The statute was promulgated on 21 January 2025 and takes effect on 22 January 2026 after a one-year preparation period. Korea becomes the second jurisdiction worldwide — after the EU AI Act — to enact a comprehensive horizontal AI law, and the first in the Asia-Pacific. The Act establishes a risk-tiered regime targeting "high-impact" AI in healthcare, energy, public services, employment decisions, and generative-AI labelling, with extraterritorial reach over foreign providers whose systems affect the Korean market or users (mandatory local representative). It creates an AI Safety Institute, a national AI policy "control tower," and R&D / standardisation programmes under MSIT. Penalties are modest by international comparison — fines up to KRW 30 million plus a one-year grace period before full enforcement.

The National Assembly of Vietnam passed the Law on Data (Luật Dữ liệu), No. 60/2024/QH15, on 30 November 2024; it enters into force on 1 July 2025. The Law is Vietnam's first comprehensive horizontal data-governance statute, extending regulation beyond personal data (already covered by Decree 13/2023/ND-CP) to all digital data — public, private, and sectoral. It introduces statutory categories of "important data" (dữ liệu quan trọng) and "core data" (dữ liệu cốt lõi) tied to national-defence and national-security review for cross-border transfer, and establishes the National Data Centre under the Ministry of Public Security plus a statutory data-broker / data-services licensing framework.

India's Finance (No. 2) Act, 2024 (Act No. 15 of 2024) repeals the 2% Equalisation Levy on e-commerce supplies and services by non-resident operators (§165A of the Finance Act 2016, introduced 2020), with effect from 1 August 2024. The repeal removes a long-standing US trade irritant — the USTR had found the 2% levy unreasonable under a Section 301 investigation, and India agreed in October 2021 to remove it as part of a multilateral OECD Pillar 1 commitment, formally implemented here three years later. The residual 6% Equalisation Levy on digital advertising under §165 (in force since 2016) was not touched by this Act and remained in force until its own repeal effective 1 April 2025 via a subsequent Finance Act.

The European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, was published in the Official Journal on 12 July 2024 and entered into force on 1 August 2024. It establishes the world's first horizontal, risk-tiered legal framework for the development, market placement, and use of AI systems — covering prohibited practices, high-risk systems, general-purpose AI models, and minimal-risk applications — with extraterritorial reach over any provider placing an AI system on the EU market or whose output is used in the EU. Penalties reach up to EUR 35 million or 7% of global annual turnover. Application is staged: prohibitions from 2 February 2025, GPAI and governance from 2 August 2025, the bulk of high-risk obligations from 2 August 2026, and product-safety-embedded high-risk systems from 2 August 2027.

Loi n° 2024-449 of 21 May 2024, known as the SREN law (Sécuriser et Réguler l'Espace Numérique), was definitively adopted by the French Parliament on 10 April 2024, validated in part by the Conseil Constitutionnel on 17 May 2024 (Decision n° 2024-866 DC), promulgated by the President on 21 May 2024, and published in the Journal Officiel on 22 May 2024. SREN is France's digital-sovereignty omnibus statute: it transposes parts of the EU Digital Services Act (Regulation 2022/2065), Digital Markets Act (Regulation 2022/1925), and Data Governance Act (Regulation 2022/868) into French law and layers national-level instruments on top — most consequentially a data-localisation hook for sensitive public-sector data tied to the ANSSI SecNumCloud sovereign-cloud certification scheme, an ARCOM-enforced age-verification regime for adult-content sites (with €250k or 2%-of-turnover fines and account-closure powers), an "anti-scam" cybersecurity filter requiring browsers and DNS resolvers to block ANSSI-designated fraudulent domains, a jeux-en-ligne (JONUM) regime for cryptoasset-adjacent gaming, and a coordination framework between CSA, CNIL, ARCOM, and the Autorité de la concurrence. SREN is one of the first EU member-state digital omnibus statutes anchoring national public-sector data-hosting rules to a sovereign-cloud certification scheme.

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) issued the Provisions on Promoting and Regulating Cross-Border Data Flows (《促进和规范数据跨境流动规定》) on 22 March 2024, effective immediately. The rules substantially raise the thresholds at which CAC security assessment, Standard Contractual Clauses (SCC), or Personal Information Protection Certification are required for outbound data transfers, and create categorical exemptions for contract performance, HR management, intra-group transfers below a volume threshold, and transit data processed in China with no domestic personal information introduced. A Free Trade Zone pilot mechanism allows designated FTZs (Shanghai Lingang, Tianjin, Beijing) to publish their own negative lists defining which data categories still require prior approval, easing conditions for multinationals with operations in those zones.

Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2023 on harmonised rules on fair access to and use of data — the "Data Act" — was published in the Official Journal on 22 December 2023, entered into force on 11 January 2024, and applies generally from 12 September 2025 (with longer transitional periods for IoT product-design obligations under Article 3(1), which apply to products placed on the market after 12 September 2026, and for the data-portability standardisation framework, applicable from 12 September 2027). The Data Act is the third pillar of the EU data-economy framework alongside the GDPR (personal data) and the Data Governance Act 2022/868 (data-intermediation services), and is the world's first horizontal statutory regime governing access to and portability of industrial / IoT / non-personal data — covering by-design data-availability obligations on connected-product manufacturers, a mandatory cloud- switching framework with progressive elimination of switching charges, B2G emergency data-sharing in exceptional needs, unfair-contract-terms protection for SMEs, and safeguards against unlawful international government access to non-personal data held in EU cloud.

Saudi Arabia's Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL), issued under Royal Decree M/19 (16 September 2021) and substantively amended by Royal Decree M/148 (27 March 2023), entered into force on 14 September 2023 with a one-year transition period that ended on 14 September 2024 — at which point the Saudi Data & Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) became the binding regulator with full enforcement powers. Alongside the Implementing Regulations and the Regulations on the Transfer of Personal Data Outside the Kingdom (both issued 7 September 2023), SDAIA published in 2024 a set of four pre-approved Standard Contractual Clauses templates (C2C, C2P, P2P, P2C) governing cross-border transfers. The regime establishes consent requirements, DPO appointment, a 72-hour breach notification duty, and prior-clearance / SCC-or-BCR-style conditions on personal-data exports out of Saudi Arabia.

Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 on a Single Market For Digital Services (Digital Services Act, DSA) was adopted by the European Parliament and Council on 19 October 2022, published in OJ L 277 on 27 October 2022, entered into force on 16 November 2022, and applied in full from 17 February 2024 (with VLOP/VLOSE obligations applying from 25 August 2023 following the Commission's initial designation letters of February 2023). The DSA establishes a graduated intermediary-liability and platform-safety framework covering all online intermediaries serving EU users, with the heaviest obligations falling on designated Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs, ≥45m monthly active EU users) and Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs): systemic-risk assessments, annual independent audits, vetted-researcher data access, recommender-system transparency, online-advertising transparency, and crisis-response cooperation mechanisms under Commission coordination. The European Commission holds exclusive enforcement authority over VLOPs and VLOSEs, with fines up to 6% of global turnover. The DSA is the structural twin-pillar to the Digital Markets Act (Reg (EU) 2022/1925): the DMA governs ex-ante competition obligations on designated gatekeepers; the DSA governs ex-post intermediary-liability, content-moderation, and platform-safety obligations across all online intermediaries.

Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 September 2022 on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act, DMA) was published in OJ L 265 on 12 October 2022, entered into force on 1 November 2022, and applied for the most part from 2 May 2023. The DMA establishes an ex-ante competition framework imposing binding obligations and prohibitions on designated "gatekeepers" operating Core Platform Services (CPS) in the EU — covering search engines, social-networking services, video-sharing platforms, number-independent interpersonal communications, operating systems, web browsers, virtual assistants, cloud computing, online intermediation services, and online advertising. The European Commission designated six gatekeepers on 6 September 2023 (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft); full compliance with all obligations was required by 7 March 2024. Subsequent designations added Booking.com (May 2024) and Apple iPadOS (April 2024). The DMA functions as the EU's structural anchor for ex-ante digital competition regulation, closing the enforcement gap left by ex-post competition law (Articles 101–102 TFEU) where market-tipping dynamics make remedies ineffective after the fact.

Government Decree 53/2022/ND-CP, signed 15 August 2022 and effective 1 October 2022, implements Article 26 of Vietnam's 2018 Law on Cybersecurity. It mandates in-country storage of three categories of data — personal data of users in Vietnam, user-generated data, and user-relationship data — for both domestic and foreign cyberspace- service providers, with a minimum 24-month retention period. Foreign enterprises providing telecoms, data storage, domain names, e-commerce, online payments, social networks, online video games, or messaging services to users in Vietnam must establish a Vietnamese branch or representative office within 12 months of a Minister of Public Security written request. The decree closes a four-year implementation gap on the 2018 Cybersecurity Law and is the principal Vietnamese digital-trade barrier alongside Decree 13/2023/ND-CP (Personal Data Protection).

Regulation (EU) 2022/868 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2022 on European data governance — the Data Governance Act (DGA) — was published in the Official Journal on 3 June 2022, entered into force on 23 June 2022, and became fully applicable on 24 September 2023. The DGA is the second pillar of the EU data-economy framework (alongside GDPR for personal data and the Data Act 2023/2854 for industrial/IoT data) and establishes four structural mechanisms: (i) a harmonised public-sector data re-use regime for protected data held by public-sector bodies; (ii) a mandatory notification and structural-separation regime for data-intermediation service providers; (iii) a voluntary recognition framework for data-altruism organisations (RDAOs); and (iv) the European Data Innovation Board (EDIB) to co-ordinate national competent authorities and advise on common European data spaces and interoperability standards. The regulation is the foundational parent statute of the existing French SREN law filing (2024-05-21) and functions as enabling legislation for the EU's sectoral common-data-space programme (Health, Agriculture, Finance, Mobility, Green Deal, Energy, etc.).

The Personal Information Protection Law of the People's Republic of China (中华人民共和国个人信息保护法 — PIPL) was adopted at the 30th meeting of the 13th NPC Standing Committee on 20 August 2021 and entered into force on 1 November 2021, constituting the third and final pillar of China's cybersecurity and data-governance regulatory trinity alongside the Cybersecurity Law (2016) and the Data Security Law (2021). The PIPL is China's comprehensive personal-information statute establishing consent-based and necessity-based legal bases for PI processing, a tiered cross-border personal-data transfer regime (CAC security assessment / PI protection certification / Standard Contractual Clauses), extraterritorial application (Art. 3) to non-Chinese controllers offering services to or analysing the behaviour of PRC residents, and a heightened protection regime for sensitive personal information and data of minors under 14. It mandates data-protection impact assessments, personal-information-protection-officer obligations at designated handlers, breach notification, and a full suite of data-subject rights including access, rectification, deletion, portability, objection, and automated- decision-making opt-out. Article 53 requires overseas controllers to establish a domestic representative or designated entity in China, providing a domestic enforcement counterparty.

The Data Security Law of the People's Republic of China (中华人民共和国数据安全法) was adopted at the 29th meeting of the 13th NPC Standing Committee on 10 June 2021 and entered into force on 1 September 2021, constituting the second pillar of China's cybersecurity and data-governance regulatory trinity alongside the Cybersecurity Law (2016) and the Personal Information Protection Law (2021). The DSL establishes a tiered data-classification regime — "important data" and "national core data" — with escalating security obligations including risk assessment, risk monitoring, breach reporting, and classified-protection requirements for data handlers. It introduces a data-export security review for "important data" generated or collected within China, the statutory parent authority operationalised by the 2024 CAC Cross-Border Data Flow Provisions, and enacts a §36 blocking statute prohibiting Chinese organisations and individuals from transferring data stored in China to foreign judicial or law-enforcement authorities without prior PRC government approval.

The Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China (中华人民共和国网络安全法) was adopted at the 24th meeting of the 12th NPC Standing Committee on 7 November 2016 and entered into force on 1 June 2017, establishing the foundational legal framework for network security governance across all sectors. The law creates the Critical Information Infrastructure Operator (CIIO) designation and protection regime administered by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), mandates data localisation for personal information and important data collected or generated by CIIOs in China, and establishes cross-border data-transfer security assessment requirements under Article 37 — the provision later operationalised by DSL 2021, PIPL 2021, and the 2024 CAC Cross-Border Data Flow Provisions. The CSL introduced multi-level protection scheme (等级保护制度 / MLPS) obligations for all network operators and network-product/service security-review procedures, under which CAC triggered the cybersecurity review of Didi Global in 2021 and the exclusion of Micron's products from Chinese critical-infrastructure projects in 2023.