International Economic Law and Policy Blog

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Digital Trade

50 posts

Resolving the Biden Administration's Internal Debate on International Digital Rules, and Reengaging in Negotiations

I've already made these points for the trade policy crowd, but I have now tried to make my pitch on a way forward for the Biden administration on international digital trade rules slightly more accessible (i.e., without so many blockquotes of international legal texts!). Below are some

The AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) governments have been working on the issue of international rules on digital trade. There was recently a leak of a draft Digital Trade Protocol to the AfCFTA Agreement (an earlier draft is here). In this post, I'm going to look at

Katherine Tai on Digital Trade

At a CFR event last week, U.S. Trade Rep. Katherine Tai said some things about digital trade. Normally for these things, I provide a quote and then react to it afterwards, but the quotes here are so long that I'm going to put my thoughts up front.

Some Digital Trade Policy Proposals for the Biden Administration on Data Flow Obligations and Exceptions

Based on a couple recent meetings I was a part of, I thought it might be helpful to put together some specific proposals for digital trade provisions related to data flow obligations and exceptions, in the context of international economic agreements. The Biden administration appears to be having some internal

The EU-Japan Approach to Data Flow Obligations and Exceptions

I've done several posts on digital trade provisions in which I set out the data flow obligations and the exceptions, and consider whether the drafters have struck a good balance in terms of promoting data flows while preserving regulatory space. A recent draft amendment to the existing EU-Japan

The U.S. Changes Its Mind in the WTO E-Commerce Negotiations

The U.S. made headlines last week by withdrawing some proposals it had previously made on specific aspects of the WTO Joint Statement Initiative on E-commerce negotiations. Many pro-trade people were upset by this decision, but for reasons I will explain below, I wasn't as bothered. My first

Katherine Tai on Industrial Policy, the Global Steel and Aluminum Arrangement, and EU Digital Regulation

Last week, U.S. Trade Rep. Katherine Tai spoke at the Center for American Progress. You can watch the whole event here. As I try to do whenever I have time and she says something in the Q & A that intrigues me, I'm going to quote a

General vs. Specific Non-Discrimination Obligations and Exceptions in Digital Trade

Following up on my last post, let me go into more detail about an issue that was under the surface in that post but I didn't really get in to: I think there is some overlap between a general non-discrimination obligation, on the one hand, and a specific

Non-Discriminatory Treatment of Digital Trade Products in the EU-NZ FTA

Last year, I did some blog posts and a short paper that looked at the wording of the provision in digital trade chapters/agreements on "Non‐ Discriminatory Treatment of Digital Products." The basic point was that the usual language in this provision refers to "digital products,"

RCEP's Airtight Data Localization Security Exception

Security exceptions in international economic law agreements tend to be more expansive than other exceptions, but over on Twitter Geraldo Vidigal pointed out recently that the RCEP security exception for data localization measures has an element that seems to go further than usual, giving any government that invokes the exception