World Trade Organisation, explained.
The Indo-Pacific is no longer facing a single digital order, but rather multiple sets of rules operating in parallel and in some instances overlapping (Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images Plus)
The WTO's new e-commerce baseline is just one layer in a fracturing digital trade order.
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Digital trade rules in the Indo-Pacific are multiplyingDigital trade rules in the Indo-Pacific are multiplying
Online purchases are so common nowadays that the structures that make them possible are hardly considered. Spot an ad on a social media feed or need something for an upcoming holiday? Click, search, select and pay – a day or so later and the item is at your door.
But this process is a microcosm of a complex and intertwined system, involving technology, logistics, secured transactions and international agreements. Not only for small packages but for huge global shipments.
This system was on the agenda last week for the World Trade Organisation Ministerial Conference in Yaoundé, Cameroon, where 66 member states decided to advance the entry-into-force pathway for the E-Commerce Agreement, covering approximately 70% of global trade.
The interim arrangements agreed at the talks reflect how – as it becomes increasingly difficult for the WTO to produce new rules through unified consensus – members are seeking to move around the need for broad and uniform decision-making by reaching digital agreements among a subset of willing participants. The WTO has 166 members, yet the search for consensus has been much harder in recent years than hunting down the latest must-have kitchen gadget.
As WTO capacity weakens in developing uniform rules, the Indo-Pacific is becoming one of the most prominent regions where digital rules overlap, compete and stratify. Australia, Japan, and Singapore have long served as co-conveners of the WTO Joint Statement Initiative on e-commerce, and they were also key participants in pushing forward these interim arrangements. Their importance lies in the fact that they are simultaneously active in multiple regional digital rule frameworks: Australia and Japan are major members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), while Singapore is both a promoter of the WTO digital agreement and a founding member of the Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEPA). These countries are not operating within a single institutional platform. Instead, they are promoting digital rules simultaneously at the global, transregional, and regional levels.
Digital trade policy will increasingly be tied to national security, supply chain resilience and geopolitical alignment – not just economics.
This means that competition to set the digital rules in the Indo-Pacific can no longer be understood within a single framework. The WTO’s current E-Commerce Agreement provides a global minimum baseline, to cover areas such as electronic contracts, electronic signatures, paperless trading, consumer protection, personal data protection, spam prevention, and cybersecurity. But it does not address market access. It also excludes government procurement, government services, and government-held information.
By contrast, the CPTPP is a higher-standard and more binding set of digital trade rules. Its e-commerce chapter explicitly prohibits customs duties on electronic transmissions and establishes more substantive disciplines on cross-border information flows, localisation of computing facilities, and source code protection.
This is part of what has become a layered structure for digital rules. DEPA is yet another layer, with the New Zealand government defining it as the world’s first standalone digital trade agreement. Its scope extends beyond data issues to include digital identity, fintech, cooperation on artificial intelligence, digital inclusion, and interoperability.
So while the WTO provides a minimum global baseline, the CPTPP provides high-standard hard rules, and DEPA offers a more flexible and forward-looking model. These three frameworks mean that the Indo-Pacific is no longer facing a single digital order, but rather multiple sets of rules operating in parallel and in some instances overlapping.
Delegates during the Ministerial Session on E-Commerce Agreement for the WTO last week in Yaoundé, Cameroon (©WTO)
More layers are being added. In 2023, ASEAN formally launched negotiations on the DEFA and announced in 2025 that the negotiations had been substantially concluded. At the same time, ASEAN’s digital master plans and strategic documents on economic community-building have repeatedly emphasised the promotion of “secure” and “trusted” cross-border data flows, digital regulatory coordination, and cooperative digital governance. This suggests that ASEAN is not content to passively accept external digital rules but is instead seeking to develop a regional digital framework better suited to the internal diversity of Southeast Asia.
China’s position adds more complexity. China is a participant in the WTO e-commerce agreement. Yet China has formally applied in 2021 to join both the CPTPP and DEPA, indicating that it is also attempting to enter and shape these high-standard frameworks.
For Indo-Pacific countries, the policy implications of this layered structure are quite direct. Countries in the region will increasingly be forced to choose among and coordinate across multiple overlapping rule systems: the WTO e-commerce agreement, the CPTPP, DEPA, and potentially more bilateral or minilateral digital arrangements in the future.
Digital trade policy will become ever harder to treat as purely economic policy, but will be tied more closely to national security, supply chain resilience, control over critical technologies and geopolitical alignment.
Developing economies that had hoped to rely on a unified global rule framework to reduce institutional costs may be disappointed. They are not simply “joining the global market” but must instead determine which rule network they are best positioned to join.
About the author
Jing Ge
Jing Ge is an instructor at Florida International University.
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