Analysts: What we talk about when we talk about digital trade

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s decision last October to withdraw support for U.S. negotiating positions on key digital trade principles at the World Trade Organization has sparked praise and criticism from different corners – and surfaced competing contentions about whether and how digital trade is, at its heart, really about trade. When USTR withdrew those positions – on cross-border data flows, data localization, source code and nondiscrimination – the agency cited a need to ensure the U.S. had...