Digital Trade : New Design Elements in Preferential Trade Agreements

The chapter offers an insight into the highly fluid field of digital trade rule-making as a direct reaction to digital transformations. Against the backdrop of the evolution of the trade policy discourse beyond online trade in goods and services and the emergence of new digital protectionism, the chapter explores the dynamics of digital trade regulation in the past decade in a complex geopolitical setting by looking at some broader trends, as well as distinct regulatory models (exemplified by the CPTPP, the USMCA, the EU-UK TCA and the RCEP) and the new templates of the Digital Economy Agreements (DEAs) that also signal room for regulatory innovation in trade law. The chapter’s enquiry seeks to identify new design elements found in preferential trade agreements (PTAs), to trace how these have diffused over time and to ask what their implications for domestic regulatory space may be. Finally and linking to the multilateral discussions on electronic commerce, the chapter tests to what extent PTAs have worked as regulatory laboratories and whether some of the newly emerged digital trade rules can be multilateralized