WTO Actions Thus Far to Address Digital Trade Despite the scope and the speed of the global digital economic transformation, there are no specific WTO rules that apply to international digital trade. Although the internet was invented in 1983,2 and commercial internet service providers began to emerge in the late 1980s,3 the World Wide Web was not created until 1990,4 and it was not commonly used commercially until the mid-1990s.5 Thus, digital trade barely existed during the Uruguay Round6 of multilateral trade negotiations, which began in 1986 and concluded with the Marrakesh Agreement7 of 1994 that established the WTO in 1995. Digital trade was, therefore, not on the trade agenda several decades ago. As Mark Wu (2017) has written, WTO rules date back to when the internet was still an obscure novelty and “many of today’s digital technologies and applications did not yet exist.” Mindful of the absence of specific WTO digital trade rules, WTO members have been trying to modernize WTO rules to deal with digital trade since shortly after the WTO was established. At the First WTO Ministerial Conference, held in Singapore in 1996, members agreed on a temporary moratorium8 on the application of customs duties for electronic transmissions of digital products and services (which does not prevent internal taxes, fees or charges on content transmitted electronically). This action was taken by consensus of WTO members to prevent the rapid spread of digital trade from being slowed by increased costs resulting from a feared outpouring of border tariffs. At the next Ministerial Conference, held in Geneva in 1998, this temporary moratorium was renewed. Accompanied by much debate,
Also in Geneva in 1998, WTO members adopted a declaration on global e-commerce,9 which called on the WTO General Council to set up a work program to examine all trade-related issues of e-commerce. At the time, this work program was intended to be exploratory; it did not launch formal negotiations. Because of the inherently cross-cutting nature of issues relating to e-commerce, the work program was divided among four different WTO councils: those on goods, services, intellectual property (IP) and development. In June 2001, the General Council held the first of a series of “dedicated discussions”10 on the work program in e-commerce. At that time, the council identified seven issues for deliberation by the members that ranged across a number of the existing trade agreements in the WTO portfolio: → the classification of digital products as goods or services; → issues concerning developing and least developed countries (LDCs); → the revenue implications of e-commerce, especially for developing countries; → the relationship between e-commerce and traditional forms of commerce (to assess shortterm disadvantages for developing countries);
2
See www.usg.edu/galileo/skills/unit07/internet07_02.phtml.
3
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid.
6
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguay_Round.
7
See www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/04-wto_e.htm.
8
See www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/mc11_e/briefing_notes_e/bfecom_e.htm.
9
Ibid.
10 See www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/ecom_e/ecom_briefnote_e.htm.
4
the moratorium has been renewed repeatedly at each successive Ministerial Conference since. Yet, after all this time, WTO members have still not been able to reach a consensus that would make this moratorium permanent.
Special Report • James Bacchus
