The WTO’s Digital Trade Negotiations in the Wake of its 13th Ministerial Conference

The World Trade Organization is struggling to respond to the proliferation of national restrictions and trade barriers in the global digital economy. The largely failed 13th Ministerial Conference that concluded on March 2, 2024 barely managed in its last hour to extend the moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions until 2026. The 90-member Joint Service Initiative launched in 2017 has been unable to finalize a negotiating text even after dropping or indefinitely pausing work on its most important but contentious issues. These include: barriers to cross-border data flows, forced data localization, forced disclosure of source code, the non-discriminatory treatment of digital products, and online platforms, among others. A key factor in this downsizing of ambitions was the US government’s extremely contentious October 2023 decision to reverse its longstanding push for strong disciplines on such items. If the negotiations ultimately produce a result, it may be more the kind of minimalist trade facilitation agreement favored by China rather than the sort of ambitious liberalization deal previously championed by the United States.

What are the prospects for global digital trade negotiations in the years ahead? What would a minimalist outcome mean for the growth of territorial borders on global flows, and Internet fragmentation? Would the sidelining of inclusive multilateral institutions further strengthen the trend toward a spaghetti bowl of varying minilateral trade deals that exclude much of the developing world? Is a sharper geopolitical clash between diverging models of digital capitalism becoming likely?

This webinar assembles a panel of leading experts on global digital trade policy to consider these and other questions. As always, the panelists’ conversation will be followed by an open dialogue among all webinar participants.


Introduction of the topic

Eli Noam is Paul Garrett Professor of Public Policy and Business Responsibility, Emeritus, and Director of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information at Columbia Business School.

Moderator

William J. Drake is Director of International Studies at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School.

Panelists


Mira Burri is Professor of International Economic and Internet Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lucerne. She is the principal investigator of the ‘Trade Law 4.0’ project, and was previously a senior fellow at the World Trade Institute, University of Bern. She is the co-author of The Classification of Services in the Digital Economy and the editor of Trade Governance in the Digital Age and Big Data and Global Trade Law. (Switzerland)

Anupam Chander is the Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law and Technology at Georgetown Law School. He was previously the Director of the California International Law Center and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law at UC Davis. He is the author The Electronic Silk Road: How the Web Binds the World in Commerce, and the co-editor of Data Sovereignty: From the Digital Silk Road to the Return of the State. (USA)

Martina F. Ferracane is a Research Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and academic manager of the Digital Trade Integration Project. She acts regularly as a consultant for several organizations, including the United Nations, the World Economic Forum and the World Bank. Martina also founded and manages FabLab Western Sicily and was listed in Forbes30U30 for her work with an innovative startup. (Italy)

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