Trade megabytes – the dynamic landscape of digital trade regulation

Trade Bites

Traditional types of trade are regulated by the World Trade Organisation, under rules which mostly date from 1995 – a time when data exchanges were accompanied by the screech of a modem, and were measured in kilobytes. So it’s perhaps not surprising that there are no meaningful global rules in place at the moment to regulate digital trade. But increasingly, as regional trade deals become more common, frameworks are starting to emerge to provide more legal and commercial certainty for those businesses which trade in cyberspace. But what happens when different jurisdictions have rules which aren’t compatible with each other? And how can we be sure that digital trade is regulated in a way which is fair for all? To discuss all this and more, Chris Horseman is joined by Ingo Borchert, Senior Lecturer at the University of Sussex and Deputy Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory; Eunice Huang, Head of Trade Policy for the Asia-Pacific region at Google; and Johannes Fritz, CEO of the Swiss-based Sankt Gallen Endowment for Prosperity Through Trade. This podcast is co-organised in collaboration with the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Trade and Investment.