For almost a decade, executives, scholars, and trade diplomats have argued that filtering, censorship, localization requirements, and domestic regulations are distorting the cross-border information flows that underpin the internet. Herein I use process tracing to examine the state and implications of digital protectionism. I make five points: First, I note that digital protectionism differs from protectionism of goods and other services. Information is intangible, highly tradable, and some information is a public good. Secondly, I argue that it will not be easy to set international rules to limit digital protectionism without shared norms and definitions. Thirdly, the US, EU, and Canada have labeled other countries policies’ protectionist, yet their arguments and actions sometimes appear hypocritical. Fourth, I discuss the challenge of Chinese failure to follow key internet governance norms. China allegedly has used a wide range of cyber strategies, including distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks (bombarding a web site with service requests) to censor information flows and impede online market access beyond its borders. WTO members have yet to discuss this issue and the threat it poses to trade norms and rules. Finally, I note that digital protectionism may be self-defeating. I then draw conclusions and make policy recommendations.

The last decade has seen a proliferation of measures requiring data to be stored within national borders. Such restrictions, known as ‘data localization measures’, disrupt digital trade and run counter to the borderless reality of the internet. But the effectiveness of existing WTO rules to adequately discipline data localization measures remains inconclusive. In the absence of meaningful progress at the multilateral level, FTA negotiations are developing new models to address such barriers. This article compares how data localization measures would be disciplined under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) framework. It argues that the CPTPP represents a significant advance on the GATS and strikes an appropriate balance between facilitating businesses’ growing need to transfer and store data across national borders while preserving governments’ right to regulate in the public interest.

We examine the impact of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) on government procurement practices in the European Union (EU). We analyse empirically whether the WTO GPA is effective in promoting non-discriminatory, open, transparent, competitive, and cost-effective government procurement. To study this question, we use a unique data set recently released by the EU, covering more than three million tenders conducted in the European Economic Area, Switzerland, and Macedonia during the years 2006–2016. We find that the WTO GPA promotes competition by increasing the probability of awarding a contract to a foreign firm. In addition, the WTO GPA significantly lowers corruption risk by decreasing the number of contracts with single bidders, and by decreasing total number of wins by a single firm. Finally, the WTO GPA fosters cost-effective public procurement by lowering the probability that the procurement price is higher than estimated cost.

Labour standards provisions within the Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) chapters of EU Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) are presented as a key element of the EU's commitment to a ‘value-based trade agenda’. But criticism of TSD chapters has led the European Commission to commit to improving their implementation and enforcement, creating a critical juncture in the evolution of the EU's trade–labour linkage. This contribution synthesizes findings from academic studies that have examined the effectiveness of labour standards provisions in EU FTAs. It then considers the reform agenda as presented by the European Commission, and explains how some of the proposals could tackle failures identified. However, it also argues that there are various limitations with the Commission's current proposals, and outlines how legal obligations and institutional mechanisms created by trade agreements could better be harnessed to improve working conditions and rights at work around the world.

The renegotiation of what US President Trump called ‘the worst trade deal ever’ has resulted in the most detailed environmental chapter in any trade agreement in history. The USMCA mentions dozens of environmental issues that its predecessor, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), overlooked, and in line with contemporary US practice, brings the vast majority of environmental provisions into the core of the agreement, and subjects these provisions to a sanction-based dispute settlement mechanism. It also jettisons two controversial NAFTA measures potentially harmful to the environment. However, this paper argues that the USMCA only makes limited contributions to environmental protection. It primarily replicates most of the environmental provisions included in recent agreements, and only introduces three unprecedented environmental provisions. Moreover, it avoids important issues such as climate change, it does not mention the precautionary principle, and it scales back some environmental provisions related to multilateral environmental agreements.