As ministerial talks at the World Trade Organization stretched into overtime this evening, the delegates who had not yet caught their flights home were bracing for a decision on how a work plan to overhaul the struggling institution can move forward.
And then there is the OECD definition... Which is about digital ordering so not just parcels....
www.oecd.org/content/dam/...
Latest news the Cameroon ministerial as the ministerial enters extra time. Will we need penalties? Maybe borderlex.net/2026/03/29/m...
Check out my new blog where I (try to) show (geek-out about) how the 1985 classic film "the Goonies" offers a metaphor for #digitaltrade: full of promise but also fraught with challenges that require cooperation, creativity and courage.
www.oecd.org/en/blogs/202...
We need to talk about cross-border flows of non-personal data!
Because:
i) these are increasingly critical for digital trade; and
ii) the number of measures affecting their flow has increased five-fold in the last decade
See our latest and greatest on this topic
👇
www.oecd.org/en/publicati...
Biggest data breach ever underway: "The top official at the Social Security Administration stepped down this weekend after members of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency sought access to sensitive personal data about millions of Americans..." www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02...
Japan, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands had the lowest average regulatory barriers to #ServicesTrade in 2024.
📊 Discover the latest #OECDSTRI data 👇 www.oecd.org/en/topics/su...
NEW TRADE TALKS PODCAST EPISODE
President Trump first imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum in 2018, but this time it’s different. On this week's show, Ana Swanson joins me to explain.
tradetalkspodcast.com/podcast/202-...
If you embrace #datafreeflowswithtrust, while others turn to digital protectionism,
If you keep e-transmissions duty free, upholding an open digital trade landscape,
If you can finalise the e-commerce JSI, ensuring it benefits all,
Then yours will be the #digitaltrade opportunities
#tradevalentines
Overall, the analysis shows that data policies matter for our globalised economy. It underscores the dangers of unnecessarily restrictive policies and suggests that balanced and global approaches to data regulation work best.
6. At the extreme, a requirement that all
data be stored domestically is equivalent to a prohibition to transfer data.
5. Local storage requirements, when not combined with cross-border data flow restrictions, tend to have a lower impact. Indeed, the removal of these would lead to an increase in global GDP of 0.18%. More restrictive forms of data localisation lead to greater negative impacts.
4. The economic costs of geoeconomic fragmentation of data flow regimes are potentially sizeable (more than 1% real global GDP loss), but much smaller than those associated with full fragmentation reflecting an already fragmented regulatory landscape.
3. Open regimes that include safeguards balance the trade costs associated with data regulation with the trust benefits of data safeguards.
Indeed, if such approaches were adopted by all economies, global GDP would grow by 1.77%.
2. The absence of data flow regulation is also associated with negative economic outcomes.
Indeed, if all economies removed their data flow regulation trade costs would fall, but so too would trust. Overall, global GDP would fall by nearly 1%
The results show that:
1. Cross-border data flows are a key element of the global economy.
Data autarky, or what might otherwise be considered as ‘full fragmentation, where all economies fully restrict their data flows, would lead to global GDP losses of 4.5% and reductions in exports of 8.5%.
This report aims to identify the potential economic implications and opportunity costs associated with different data flow and data localisation regulations.
What is novel about it is that it looks at the trade cost and trust benefits associated with the regulation.
The implications of these measures are not well understood, especially where it relates to finding a balance between enabling flows while also ensuring that data receives the desired safeguards when transferred abroad, a concept that has also been referred to as data free flows with trust (#DFFT).
#Dataflows are the lifeblood of our modern social and economic interactions. However, concerns related to #privacy, #nationalsecurity and #regulatoryreach, among others, have led to growing regulation conditioning (or prohibiting) its flow or mandating that data be stored or processed domestically.
Ever wondered about the economic impact of data regulation?
Our recent OECD-WTO study has you covered:
www.oecd.org/en/publicati...
See below the TLDR
I get that you are all talking about tariffs... but if you want to hear about the benefits of getting cross-border data flow regulation right, please join us on the 10th of February for the launch of the OECD-WTO report on the economic impact of data regulation!
www.wto.org/english/res_...
How to ensure the resilience of critical global supply chains? In this paper with Bublu Thakur-Weigold, we discuss effective solutions based on a review of the supply chain management literature and recent actions by firms and governments.
doi.org/10.1787/be69...
Flash: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala reappointed as #WTO director general
By Chris Horseman👇
borderlex.net/2024/11/29/f...
OECD Trade Avengers in Brussels!
With all this talk about #deminimis, useful to re-up this paper from 2021 on trade in the time of parcels.
www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/0f...
Find out what items were most traded as parcels (during COVID), and how governments can help expedite parcels trade across the border.
If @worldbollardassoc.bsky.social is here then the Xodus is complete, we have all we need! Agree, it's so nice to read all of you trade peeps again... X really was crowding out all the good stuff!
The grass is definitely greener on this other side!
(been here for more than 10 minutes without being subjected to EM propaganda!)
