International Trade Law and Global Data Governance: Aligning Perspectives and Practices

This book presents a deep dive into how international trade agreements apply to domestic regulatory frameworks on cross-border data flows, their interface with norms and practices in global data governance, and whether international trade law can address policy challenges arising from this complex interface.

Digital trade and global data governance are at a unique crossroads, raising significant and complex political, economic, and socio-cultural challenges in our world today. Unravelling this complex interface, the book contains 5 chapters focusing on critical policy areas at the interface of digital trade and global data governance: cybersecurity, privacy, law enforcement and regulatory access to data, competition, and digital development. Each of these chapters analyse how trade rules apply to relevant domestic regulations using examples from across the world, and then outline proposals to align international trade law with evolving norms, standards, and best practices in each of these policy areas. The penultimate chapter synthesises findings from across these areas to propose a multi-layered framework containing digital economy-compatible trade rules that balances various policy priorities in global/transnational and domestic data governance. This framework also outlines the role of international trade agreements in facilitating coherence on data-related policies at a transnational level, which can in turn facilitate fair, robust, and contextual co-regulatory approaches at the domestic level.

As the book offers a holistic perspective regarding the role and significance of digital trade rules in a datafied world, it is of interest to scholars, practitioners and policymakers working on digital trade and data regulation, facilitating its readers to explore fresh avenues in the future development of digital trade rules.