India's concerns validated as US withdraws support for some WTO e-commerce proposals

In what may be seen as a strong validation of India's long-standing concern related to potential challenges with unregulated digital trade, the United States has announced its decision on 25 October 2023 to withdraw support for select World Trade Organisation e-commerce proposals.

- NIVEDITA MUKHERJEE

While the move is seen by trade experts as a pivotal one, signalling Washington's emphasis on national security over tech influences, global digital trade tensions are set to soar given the US' dominant role in the global digital landscape, according to a GTRI report. The withdrawals, according to various sources, were made in Geneva during a meeting of the WTO's joint statement initiative on e-commerce, with the US attributing the review of its approach, to trade rules in sensitive areas as data and source code.

Importantly, the new US stand on digital trade is well aligned with India's approach on the subject, notes Ajay Srivastava, founder of the technology and trade research group GTRI. New Delhi had long ago foreseen potential challenges with unregulated digital trade and thus refrained from participating in the WTO e-commerce negotiations and has a conservative stand in free trade agreements (FTAS).

The change in the US stand on WTO ecommerce negotiations, however, is poised to spark a worldwide reassessment of national e-commerce policies, which could potentially reshape the future of digital trade agreements, suggests GTRI. The key issues will be ensuring ample "policy space" and revisiting national digital trade strategies. As a build-up to these dynamics of WTO e-commerce discussions, culminating in this move by the US administration, GTRI tracks the genesis of the negotiations to a 2019 exercise by 89 WTO members striving to reach a consensus on vital digital subjects. The contentious issues at stake involve data flows, data localization and protection of source code.