APEC Digital Trade Provisions Handbook

This Handbook is for APEC economies to utilise in policy making by identifying contemporary and ambitious digital trade provisions and areas where more work is needed. It explores the purpose of individual provisions, what they seek to achieve and how to write them in such a way that will generate the greatest economic impact. Past research in APEC has shown the significant economic benefits to be realized from increased coverage of Digital Trade rules between trade partners in the region. Digital trade provisions coming into force between 2000 and 2018 added roughly USD 40.1 billion or 2.9% to digitally delivered trade flows in 2018. The adoption of specific digital trade provisions has been found to increase the flows of digitally ordered and digitally deliverable trade by between 11% and 44% in successive years.