Day two of Australia's draft 2.25% revenue tax on Meta, Google, and TikTok closed Wednesday without a United States Trade Representative statement, a Commerce Department response, or a platform-coalition counter-proposal — three responses Canberra's Treasury had reasonably modeled inside the consultation window [1][2][3].

Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones told the Australian Financial Review the bypass design — sidestepping the 2021 News Media Bargaining Code's direct-bargaining mechanism — was deliberate, not a fallback. The bargaining code, Jones said, had not delivered the journalism funding it promised, and a revenue tax routes funds through Treasury rather than through commercial negotiations the platforms had quietly slowed [2]. Meta's policy team confirmed it was "evaluating" but issued no opposition statement. Google declined comment. TikTok's Asia-Pacific spokeswoman said the company would "engage constructively" inside the window.

The Apr 30 international register matters because three other jurisdictions — Canada, Indonesia, the EU's parallel proposal — have signaled that an Australian model would resolve their own bargaining-code stalemates. The bypass is exportable. USTR's silence on day two suggests Washington has decided to wait for the consultation to close before responding, which is the opposite of the response posture the United States took to Australia's 2021 code.

The consultation closes May 30. The draft moves to the Senate's economics committee thereafter. The paper's press-freedom-wartime thread holds the brief as the new platform-policy artifact at week one of its consultation window.

-- ANNA WEBER, Berlin