Summary:

Singapore has emerged as the leading innovator in international digital trade governance. As digitalization becomes ever more prevalent in global trade and the broader economy, the need for digital trade governance has also grown. By analyzing the Trade Agreements Provisions on Electronic-commerce and Data (TAPED) dataset, we identify leading actors and salient issues in digital trade governance as well as emergent areas of potential interest. The most prevalent provisions relate to intellectual property, data protection and e-commerce. Emergent issues include digital identities, fintech cooperation, AI and competition policy.

Singapore’s Digital Economy Agreements are a promising way to move the digital trade governance agenda forward in the face of a lack of global consensus by bringing together like-minded countries to address the growing gap between technological developments and the existing global governance framework. Key challenges towards digital trade governance lie in the growing “spaghetti bowl” of digital trade provisions generated by an expanding body of bilateral and multilateral agreements as well as the onerous cost of undertaking such agreements.

For more on this analysis, please see: Comparative Analysis of Digital Trade Provisions: Challenges and Lessons for Singapore (Authors: LEE, Jesslene, BANH, Thi Hang and TAN, Kway Guan)

Article By TAN, Kway Guan

Graphic By GE, Yixuan