Digital Trade Agreements in Asia and the Pacific

Digital Trade Agreements in Asia and the Pacific MARCH 2024 DIGITAL TRADE AGREEMENTS IN ASIA AND THE PACIFIC Digital Trade Agreements in Asia and the Pacific Digital Trade and Digital Economy Agreements in Asia and the Pacific This document benefited from the inputs from Nextrade Group, led by Kati Suominen, with research support by Erica Vambell, and was edited by Mark Koenig, Rodrigo Balbontin,. [...] Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) and further in the negotiation of the CPTPP – the expanded version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) formed by Chile, New Zealand and Singapore in the 2000s (which had some e-commerce provisions) and built on top of multiple intersecting trade agreements in the region. [...] The Australia-Singapore DEA has mentions on AI, generating the expectation of provisions to come; calling for members to “collaborate on and promote the development and adoption of frameworks that support the trusted, safe, and responsible use of AI technologies”, and recognize the “the importance of Page 17 Digital Trade Agreements in Asia and the Pacific developing ethical governance frameworks. [...] Impacts and implementation of DTAs and DEAs The impact of DTAs and DEAs on trade and on digital trade is an unexplored area of research, partially due to the small number of agreements and formed only recently among a handful of economies. [...] Suominen (2021) performs a gravity model for bilateral trade among countries for goods between 1970 and 2020 and for services and digitally deliverable services between 2005 and 2019, disaggregating FTAs into four types that cover trade in goods; trade in services; trade in goods and services; and trade in goods, services, and digital trade (Suominem, 2021).