CITI Governance - Digital Economy Agreements and Digital Partnerships: Modular Paths to International Cooperation

10:52AM Sep 20, 2023

Speakers:

Judith Hellerstein

William J. Drake

David Allen

Keywords:

agreements

trade

digital economy

digital

issues

countries

modules

deeper

provisions

singapore

question

new zealand

greater

framework

talk

approach

address

stakeholders

stephanie

aspect

information at Columbia Business School. I'm Bill Drake. I'm the Director of International Studies at CIT I. Normally we start with an introduction by Ellie Nome was the founding director of CTI and has been there for two years but Ellie's out of town. So I'm just going to jump right in an Ellie will join us next time we meet. This is a series on global digital governance, the international rules of the game set by states and stakeholders for digital information communication technologies. This is the first meeting of the academic year. The last academic year we have meetings on a variety of topics like the ITU Internet governance and fragmentation, the Internet Governance Forum, ICANN ESCO, social media guidelines, the UN digital Cooperation Forum proposal and so on. There were a lot of interesting developments on all those since then, as you probably no videos and transcripts of previous sessions. The series are on our website, listed on the announcements today, as well as on the ISOC live website. And this year, we'll be continuing the conversation with sessions on things like the UN cybercrime treaty, the WTO digital trade negotiations and various other things to October. We're not going to have a meeting because I'm traveling. Our next meeting will be Wednesday, November 15. Oh, to get them to today's topic. There have been long standing debates about the importance need for his institutional innovation, global digital governance as new issues arise. There's always demands expressed in the global policy marketplace for new governance mechanisms to tackle these issues, but often, not much effective supply of governance solutions due to differences among states and stakeholders and the volatility of the Oh, so existing intergovernmental organizations and regimes often struggle to expand their mandate and get buy in new issues. And new organizations regimes are often hard to stand up for the same kinds of political reasons.

Somebody needs to mute your mic.

But anyway, the problems that they had a patient that I'm talking

about have been especially acute the trade domain

as we've seen, domestic and international politics have made cutting odd and strong multilateral deals on digital trade and related issues harder and harder. And even the US government, which historically has been the driving force of those kinds of agreements, has been sort of backing off on them, and opting for more flexible kinds of arrangements like the Indo Pacific economic framework for prosperity when something new happens this seems to be working, or at least seems to promise is worth taking note of that. And that's why we're talking today about digital economy agreements and digital partnerships. Digital Economy agreements are new approaches to international cooperation and policy convergence. They've emerged alongside and been informed by digital trade negotiations. The center of gravity on these who had been has been in the Asia Pacific region, with Singapore being very centrally involved. The most widely discussed example of a DEA digital economy grant is the 2020 Digital Economy partnership agreement or deeper between Chile, Singapore and New Zealand. Korea has just joined to those four member countries and Canada and China are in the process of trying to join. So the most significant and foundational of the digital economy route so we'll probably talk a lot about it here today. But there have been other inter governmental parents as well, including the 2020 Singapore Australia digital economy agreement 2022, UK, Singapore in 2023. We have Singapore digital partnership agreement. And now you may know that the 10 member Association of Southeast Asian Nations has launched negotiations with ASEAN digital economy Framework Agreement, which could constitute another broader variant of this. All of these agreements have addressed multiple issues in the digital economy, promoting policy convergence on many topics that have been addressed to varying degrees in free trade agreements, but addressing them in a way that's without the traditional apparatus, or trade treaties. So you've got language on issues like cross border data flows force data localization, online customs duties, trade treatment of digital products, business and trade facilitation, invoicing certificates, source code and so on. But also a lot of other kinds of issues are being addressed as well not discrimination. Market Access has not been as central to some of these things, discussions of supply chains, digital identities, digital inclusion, consumer protection, FinTech, artificial intelligence, Regulatory Sandboxes efforts to support small and medium sized firms. There's a lot of language covered by these agreements that are sort of go beyond the kind of traditional kinds of focus of trade agreements. And in parallel, the European Union has launched a series of what he calls digital partnerships. We have the Japan EU digital partnership, eu Korea digital partnership and the EU, Singapore leadership all agreed in 2022. With more anticipated, unlike DEA is these are legally non binding agreements, generally more programmatic rules focused, but they share some and they cover many different issues with the EAS. They share some similar architecture having multiple tracks of activity and move at different rates in different ways under an umbrella framework. And the addition partnerships also explicitly call for regular multi stakeholder dialogue and input, which I think is an important dimension you'd like to see built out more and coordination of positions and other international forums. So but the most notable shared feature, the DEA says digital partnerships, and the thing that we want to talk talk about here today is the notion of their modular architecture. This is to me, purely interesting. Modularity is not an entirely new construct. There are other international institutions that have used formulas, elements that can be characterized as modular, but in the DBAs and the DPS that's explicitly a foundational kind of feature. Modularity can mean different things to different people. But here we're talking about an architecture that treats different issue sets differently as discrete components under an integrative umbrella framework. So the Brussels Paul's doesn't use the term modular in its digital partnerships and talks about a range of modalities. I mean, basically, it's the same kind of construct. And what this allows then is mixing and matching of different types of efforts on the part of governments and stakeholders. You can have variable commitments, Hard and Soft agreements depending on the maturity of the issue and how well developed consensus is you can have you can address issues in variable speeds and deaths have kind of different levels of agreement on different issues. You can institutionalize different kinds of patterns of cooperation for different issues using joint mechanisms like working groups, or putting things under a broad oversight console. That just makes the whole framework kind of more adaptable and agile and a living agreement that can be updated as issues arise and allows potentially and explicitly in the case of digital partnerships for stakeholder participation, and avoids a lot of the kind of negotiation dynamics that are characterized characteristic of traditional trade deals where you have a kind of all or nothing trade package here you can have different levels of agreement on different issues in a more disaggregated way that allows us to be progressed and you can even have essentially I suppose layered membership architectures, so on. So margin layer approaches, I think, are quite interesting if you're going to try to address broad range of digital governance issues between different groupings of countries. And so I thought it'd be useful to have a session about this. And in fact, we're going to do the people were speaking today session related to this on digital economy agreements and Internet fragmentation at the Internet Governance Forum, the UN meeting in Kyoto in a couple of weeks. And we're will be joined by a couple of other speakers. as well. Talk about fragmentation aspects. So it's a it's an important set of issues and I'm very happy to have to talk about it a leading panel of leading group of analysts who have been involved in these issues. Stephanie honey is joining us from New Zealand and Stephanie wasn't included in the event announcement because I wrongly assumed she wouldn't want to get up and give a talk at 3am in the morning in New Zealand, but I'm glad she she's joining us so Stephanie, welcome. She's a trade policy consultant, and previously worked for the government to New Zealand as a WTO trade negotiator was much involved in the depot, the digital economy, the agreement that I mentioned, which is kind of foundational to all this. She's currently a lead staffer for New Zealand members of the APEC Business Advisory Council and a trade policy adviser to the New Zealand Asia Institute. At the University of Auckland. So she's joining us from New Zealand again, welcome. Now Mishra is assistant professor at Geneva Graduate Institute. She was previously a lecturer at the Australian National University College of Law and a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Law at the National University of Singapore. She joins us from Switzerland, also in Switzerland is Richard salmons is the director of the International Labour organization's research department and has been his Sherpa to the G 20 g7 and bricks processes. Previously, he was a founder and chairman of the climate disclosure standards board and Managing Director of the World Economic Forum and Director General of the Global Green Growth Institute. Among other things, he's has a long back also served in the Clinton administration in the White House and he's joining us from Switzerland. And finally, Martha soprano is a fellow in international political economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has extensive experience working with international organizations on digital trade issues. She's joining us from the UK. Oh, thanks panel. We'll do four or five rounds. A tour de taba. Talking about some different questions and then we'll open it up as always to open discussion with people who are intended in attendance here at the top of the hour. That's the game plan

and looking forward to a vibrant conversation.

So okay, let's get started. So let's start first of all with just the basics because I think a lot of the people who attend these sessions are more telecom and Internet governance kind of background people than trade people. So not everybody's gonna be familiar with digital economy agreements and how they work and so on. So let's just start with basics of what are we talking about here? The Who, what, why, what are digital economy agreements, what's been agreed to date, important in general, have they been?

And so on? And any thoughts on the digital partnerships with the EU as well

also useful,

so can I ask to start Stephanie, who can I guess to start?

Thank you, Bill. I think that's my cue. So in a nutshell,

these a new kind of agreement, digital burst dedicated digital economy agreements that have really come out of a process a sort of an evolutionary process in the Asia Pacific, the Indo Pacific over the last sort of 10 years or so, and they are agreements that essentially try to see a series of rules, but also really importantly, a kind of creating a platform for conversation about regulatory coherence, essentially, in the digital economy. And so these agreements are not a classical FTA that include market access commitments, for example, but they have a range of different elements modules, as you rightly commented in your introduction, which address different aspects of digital trade, ranging from things like trade facilitation, so paperless trade and invoicing and so on, through two elements around digital trust, so things like digital identities, privacy and data protection, but also seeking to enhance innovation. And participation in the digital economy. So notably, these these new style agreements also include provisions on things like artificial intelligence, Data Innovation, data sharing, but also inclusion for small businesses, other other groups and in trade that have not traditionally been significant participants. So, for instance, the digital economy partnership agreement that you mentioned, among New Zealand, Chile and Singapore and recently Korea includes a provision on digital inclusion that specifically mentions the participation of women, indigenous communities and so on. Let me leave it there and give a chance for my my panelist, colleagues to chip in as well. Thank you like to join.

I tell you, you've done work on deeper thought so

you can turn it Yes. Again, just basically outlining for people that fundamentally are these payments about? Yeah, I

think that it's important as, as Stephanie

mentioned, when we talk about these agreements, we're really in especially the digital economy Partnership Agreement, we're really talking about a completely different type of free trade agreement or or professional trade agreement that we have discussed before, never before. Depa is actually the first international trade agreement that is completely dedicated to trade in the digital economy. And it doesn't, it doesn't address trade in the traditional WTO dichotomy of services and goods. It kind of like looks at from a more holistic kind of kind of approach. And as as definitely mentioned, that are some of the issues that are addressed in these agreements, there are completely different or very forward looking with respect to anything that has been covered before. So in a way, sort of deep and particular we can see it as some sort of like a watershed. That was the negotiations were launched in 2019. If I'm not mistaken and completed in in June of 2020. And we cannot really see as this as a completely new type of agreement that was only dedicated to digital trade, and therefore, the way it was negotiated the fact that it involves three countries that have similar characteristics, which is Chilean, New Zealand and Singapore, that are relatively small countries that look very much to maintaining an open economy and free trade and benefiting from free trade already says a lot about way sort of the spirit behind the negotiation of, of disagreement. And, you know, there is a lot I mean, we'll go on and on about discussing the sort of what will come after but in a way sort of in the history of and in the context of the WTO in particular, this agreement kind of like is completely different from anything that we have seen before. That's the important point, and that's why

we want to talk about them today. That's very helpful.

Thank you. The fact that you have fairly comparable numbers involved I think is a is a key consideration here when we think about this as a model and how much it generalizes. Who else would like to get in on this first round? RiftCat? Sure. Let me make a slightly broader point, step back a little bit.

And that is that these agreements or these

negotiations are significant. From an international system standpoint in the following sense,

up to this point, almost exclusively trade negotiations have been focused on market access of one sort of or another. At the same time, capital has flowed much more extensively over the last couple decades or so that has been pushing countries to coordinate areas of regulation that heretofore were mainly considered domestic in nature and the purview of national or domestic authorities. This is not the first such area where we begin to see a big agenda for regular regulatory cooperation and coordination. But this one started out several years ago as a more traditional way within the trade framework, which I'm sure Bill you could elaborate on, as you know, basically looking at market access dimensions highly influenced by some of the chief corporate actors or first movers in the space. So, in the traditional way, trade policy is organized in many countries. As you know, we're setting the agenda to focus in particular on market access priorities. However, as was the case with investment, international investment, which started in a similar way and hit some major bumps in the road 1020 years ago, in the international trade system, there are major domestic social, and other considerations that need to be brought to bear and the investment international investment regimes have been playing catch up for many years in this regard, are now in a kind of a phase where we're internationally, we're developing new types of international investment agreements, whether they might be bilateral or or lateral, which seek to strike a better balance between these types of social considerations on the one hand, and the traditional offensive market access export promotion priorities that are the traditional bread and butter of trade policy. I personally see this, this this development, I don't know well, they call it a proliferation yet but this ongoing development of a variety of different approaches toward developing digital economy agreements, as a welcome move, try to short circuit the earlier problems that the investment for example, had in the trade regime. That's the great promise of them. I know we'll get into a little bit more detail going forward. I think there's there's still a long way to go to strike that balance, but I'll leave it there. Really helpful. Rick, I think you're right. That's

the trick, because trade has proven so difficult in contemporary contexts for Summit. So in these issues, this is providing another way of trying to get at some of these things. How did you want to get an understanding

just I also want to emphasize

that the trust when we think of trade

agreements, we also often thinking of disputes and are going for trade tribunals, but the thrust of these agreements is not dispute settlement at all. And as Stephanie and Marta emphasize, it's more about building platforms for interoperability for regulatory cooperation. And even though it is a trade agreement, like the BAA or Singapore, Australia In Australia digital economy agreement actually replaces the E commerce chapter in their FTA but a lot of provisions in these d s are actually soft law, they are not binding. And in that sense, you know, generally when you think of trade agreements, you think of binding rules, but they are just soft provisions which allow for different forms of cooperation and in that sense, if you compare them with the EU partnerships, the EU, Japan or you Singapore, you Korea, if you compare the provision, the trust is quite similar. It's on trust building. It's on building interoperability. So yes, I know we have these different terminologies and we don't know how to exactly club them. But if you look at the trust, then it's actually the digital economy. agreements can be considered to be a very broad broad range of instruments and not just very traditional trade like instruments. This aspect that you've talked about,

the use of soft log and normative

objectives and things like that. is obviously one of the things that makes these things a bit easier for states to work with. At the same time, of course, some of the private sector has concerns that they don't think that's providing enough, you know, meaningful market liberalisation and so on. So that's one of the points you might want to get into, you know, it's a, it's a trust built building and evolutionary kind of approach. Well, why don't why don't we try to zero in a little bit more, this modular aspect, because I think that that's, that's really kind of, I mean, aside from the fact the use of softlock the modular structure is what I think is kind of interesting, because it really does provide states with a little bit more of a flexible kind of menu of options for how they're going to cooperate with each other and where they want to bind themselves to stronger convergence of policies or harmonization where they want to have more established and ongoing work programs to elaborate trust and joint projects, etc. So it's kind of an interesting approach. So my question I guess is, can we talk a little bit more about what's interesting or unique about doing things in a modular way? Can the modular models be scaled? evolved to do other things, for example, EU has in its partnerships, explicitly said that we're going to use these things as ways of bringing in stakeholder participation, which historically you did not have into trade agreements. The notion that there'd be ongoing our engagement of people from the private sector, civil society, and so on. The EU is trying to do that. One could do that with TAS too. So the question is really the modular aspect to it was it unique, what can be done with it? I say go for it. Yeah. Thanks, Bill.

If I could jump in first on this one. I think

it's it's important to draw a bit of a distinction between the digital economy partnership agreement that we talked about earlier, and the rest. So essentially, the landscape has you've got deeper the digital economy Partnership Agreement, which is very deliberately framed as an open plurilateral agreement. So there's an accession mechanism, other countries can essentially join the deeper or can take some or all of the modules of the deeper and and use them, but then separately, there are bilateral or sort of closed set agreements, if you like. So those digital partnerships that the EU has with a number of Indo Pacific economies, but also some Singapore lead bilateral digital economy agreement DEA is so for instance, between Singapore and Australia, Singapore and Korea, and most recently, Singapore, or relatively recently, Singapore and the United Kingdom as well. So taking it outside of the sort of Indo Pacific region, but the the significance of of making that distinction between the bilateral instruments and the deeper is because the deeper in particular has been designed as essentially a tool to generate greater global coherence and digital economy regulation or digital trade regulation. So as I said, it's an open agreement that others can join. And fundamentally the authors of the agreement had this goal at the beginning of trying to influence global norms. So as Marta pointed out, you know, its three initially was three small, open economies, you know, why do they need to do an agreement there aren't, you know, sort of major regulatory frictions that need to be addressed? Between those three but I think it was driven by a desire to see greater coherence because fundamentally, digital trade is global, you know, a small business and an economy doesn't think I'm going to you know, try to market my digital services or my digital products. into a particular country. They're looking at the global marketplace, and that's made more complex if there's regulatory heterogeneity if, if the rules are different in different economies. So, what the three authors of the deeper started out by saying is, how can we as small participants, in the global trading system, create a greater, you know, more seamless digital economy? And so the deeper is essentially a tool to do that. So either countries can join the deeper and that would generate a more seamless, you know, free trade zone. If you like for digital products or digital trade, or it can have influence on the way other countries design their own trade rules by plucking out these modules that you mentioned. So the deeper has 16 different modules that cover sort of thematic issues. So for example, business trust or innovation or inclusion or, you know, data governance, and so other countries could simply choose to use the model if you like the model agreement on paperless trade. Let's say or personal information protection, use that in their own agreements. And I think the author is very deliberately set out to create essentially a sort of a gold standard model on particular aspects of digital economy regulation that could influence global norms. And, you know, I think very deliberately also feed into this process that's going on in Geneva to negotiate a new set of digital rules under under WTO auspices as well. The transferability of the

modules

and their possible replication and the fact that other countries can join the open framework for data these are all really, I think, important aspects. Who else would like to jump on this modularity? Mr. T? Yes, please.

I think that one other

aspect that we should consider about this idea of modularity,

and this way to look at it is the fact that each of these modules in a way is like self contained. They address like a set of issues, specific issues within each of the modules. But in a way, like there are under these, you know, there's coherence between the different modules, but as Stephanie pointed out, you can actually take some of these modules and not all of them and just replicate it and use them as templates for your domestic policy or use them as template for our bilateral free trade agreements that you want to sign. What is interesting though, within also this modular setting is that can actually advanced on

some level you can discuss issues that have been included time and

time again, in previous chapters on electronic commerce or digital trade, I mean, proper, less trade is actually the first provision to ever appear in in an international trade agreement in a bilateral trade agreement. And I think it was between New Zealand and Singapore in the early 2000s. So some of you know some of the issues related to data. So some of the modules for example, related to data issues, cover kind of like foundational and more core issues that we have been discussing time and time. Again, in the past couple of decades, whenever we discuss a commerce so maybe in these cases, these modules you can actually have maybe language that is even a little bit less best endeavor and a little bit more binding that has a little bit more bite to it same time, one of the reasons for example, why Deepak was such an interesting new type of approach to the regulation of digital trade, that you can have modules on very new issues, where you can just have these modules so in the case of emerging technologies, Deepa was the first agreement to ever include a provision on artificial intelligence before everyone started really talking so much about AI as we were doing day because of Ted GPT. And everyone kind of like, getting a little bit scared about generic TV and AI and general purpose AI. So I think that these modular approach probably allows you to address client long standing issue and maybe go deeper in these sort of issues. And same time, it allows you to maybe forward and you know, some of potentially new issues that haven't been discussed so much before, but that may be the future of digital trade regulation and therefore should be sort of at least put to the attention and to the table. And as now mentioned before, some of them have really best in their language in particular, those related to emerging technologies, because probably we're still not, you know, the countries that kind of negotiated

this did not feel that they could negotiate something that was more binding

at the time because it was still very new. So I think that this is one of the potential advantages of this modular sort of approach is the new issues

where the circumstances are not right to try to cut

a strong binding agreement that you essentially institutionalize a process of ongoing collaboration that will hopefully over time build up and lead to greater convergence of policy. Whereas for other issues, you can go further so modular allows them multispeed multiformat kind of approach either the other two left edge in on this point or go ahead. Read them.

Okay. So I just had a brief point to Mattis point.

So usually, I think when when we think of such international agreements, we think also of international law, but the way I look at these digital economy agreements deeper and a lot of follow up agreements as well is they kind of generate these transnational legal orders which, which take into account that there are multiple stakeholders it's not just government to government, there are multiple stakeholders involved in this process. So I remember you mentioned at the beginning something about stakeholder engagement and a lot of digital economy agreements, including the deeper have a provision on stakeholder engagement, which is that from time to time, we'll have these deliberations around digital economy and we will involve different stakeholders. And I think this is the natural outcome of a modular process because, of course, there are certain modules for which maybe if there's a module or non discrimination, governments may not necessarily consult many stakeholders, but if it's a module on an emerging technology or on on Data Innovation, then a lot of other stakeholders could be involved. So it kind of creates that flexibility, which I think is a added advantage to this format. And you know, me coming for those of us who've been involved in

multi stakeholder

processes and Internet governance and so on. One of the frustrations is always when you deal with the trade world, that the trade people say, oh, you can't have stakeholders involved. We're negotiating mutual concessions to each other, it's too sensitive. If you let stakeholders be there to table you'll never be able to read or give up bananas for the other guys of cotton or whatever. And here you have a mechanism that says okay, we're going to work on some of the same issues. We have the possibility of drawing stakeholders in that can include new kinds of stakeholders that are often not involved the like civil society, labor, or other kinds of players who can't directly engage in trade processes. So and some of them also mentioned the academia quite some of these digital economy agreements

also mentioned the role of academia in certain aspects, especially development of new technologies. So I think that's quite critical. as well. And if that links are given,

obviously, the key thing is

that I jumped back in there because I, you know, fully fully

endorse what he has said

and you as well bill that and I think this is a novel quality of these new style agreements as well, and actually really reflects the nature of digital trade itself. Because I think in a lot of cases, we're all sort of building the plane as we're flying it. You know, a lot of these particularly in the more sort of Frontier technology areas. These are new areas of sort of technology and trade, with new implications for the sort of economic impact the legal implications, the sort of rights and civil society sort of impacts as well. And I think, you know, the fact that this stakeholder engagement is sort of baked into a lot of these days and particularly the deeper really reflects the fact that nobody has a monopoly on the knowledge and the understanding of what these these new kinds of technologies actually mean. And in fact, often, for instance, business or big tech, or small startups, and innovative firms have a much more nuanced understanding about what is needed to enable or what barriers are in these areas. I was engaged by the New Zealand government to moderate the first SME dialogue, so small and medium enterprise dialogue under the deeper which focused on the FinTech sector. And that was actually a really interesting exercise because I would say that, you know, there's a very long tradition of cooperation and engagement on trade between New Zealand, Singapore and Chile, the the founder members have deeper going right back, actually to the early days of the TPP agreement, or CP TPP, as it's now called the Comprehensive and progressive agreement for Trans Pacific Partnership. Where, you know, those three countries actually started the ball rolling for the TPP as well, that that began as a an agreement between those three countries and then grew into the TPP. And I think the deeper parties saw this process as a similar one where eventually you know, it will be a sort of a snowball effect. building into a much bigger agreement. But despite that tradition of knowledge and familiarity among those three economies, when we got to do the deeper SME dialogue, which focused on the FinTech sector, it was so interesting that there was actually not a hugely strong relationship among the fintech sectors, the regulators, the negotiators in that area. And so it was actually an incredibly valuable process of of thickening the relationships and deepening the ties, and understanding the nuances of how FinTech works between those three countries and globally. So I think, you know, the stakeholder and great engagement is a critical element of these days, because it not only helps policymakers to understand priorities, the concerns, the implications of what they're doing, but it gives the business community a chance to really leverage these agreements to generate more business and presumably also in the civil society dimension. It gives a chance for some of the sort of unforeseen consequences of some of these new technologies to be given greater visibility and a chance for policymakers to respond to that in a more formalized way as well. So really, I think quite an innovative aspect that reflects, Rick pointed out earlier, the really very sort of cross cutting nature of the digital economy that touches not just on, you know, trade, quote, unquote, but a much broader dimension. of sort of civil society rights, life economics, labor issues, inclusion and the economy and so on. Drawing in stakeholders not only strengthens

the discussion in

terms of qualitative character of also maybe it helps to avoid some of the political problems that happened later. I mean, you look at what happened with TPP and so on. So many trade agreements, you know, after the fact what's that? You know, trade negotiators come out of the room with a smoke signals and say, here's what we did, and labor and other civil society groups, I'll stand up say, hey, we don't want this. From that standpoint. Rick, do you think kind of frameworks could be useful in drawing labour into a better more formative discussion around digital governance issues? Potentially but it all boils down to what the

what the operating mode is of the negotiating team of the governments in this regard, you know, if their coalition is basically to do things without all sorts of ex ante consultation, and they're going to may well do that in this case, as well. What I'd like to do is, is take this modularity discussion, really good one into an additional direction on that here. And that is that it's not modularity is not just a useful device for dealing with new issues that people are sort of getting to a better understanding of like the implications of blockchain or AI or generative AI etc. You also see modularity or what I might call variable geometry within existing agreements, the early agreements, cross different provisions of them, some of even on bread and butter issues like basically, e commerce facilitation on my column aspects. Some of the some of these areas are treated essentially as principles. There, they're leaving a lot of space to national authorities to figure out exactly what they're gonna do to implement it. As opposed to having really binding, minimum,

consistent and comparable rules.

That's another, another sort of aspect of modularity if you will, and I want to connect this to the larger systemic, international trade system aspect of this, and that is that so you've got, you know, different tiers of obligations or commitments in some of these agreements along the lines that I've suggested and others and that connects to how the whole architecture is going to evolve, and succeeding years and decades in the following sense. Different countries have different sensitivities about in particular, how they're going to apply the ample exceptions that exist in a number of these agreements. Those exceptions basically or relate to what I was talking about just a moment ago, is basically these are kind of National Institute

bed principles, agreed principles into domestic regulation,

but there's no specific in many cases, template for exactly what that national regulatory framework ought to look like. That connects with different levels of appetite or international comparability consistency. And, you know, let me take an example. You know, the sort of the most pronounced examples of this. China has applied to become a member of some of these right, but it has a very different conception of how of what the regime should be for cross border data flows. Other considerations then many other countries including this, the the pioneers that signed up to the depot so I

think we're going to see modularity or variable geometry

across different agreements out there. And, again, let me connect this to the WTO discussions. There are 70 some odd countries involved in this joint statement initiative. You can imagine the more multilateral, more broadly plurilateral, if you will, the membership of an undertaking like this will be more you're going to have a least common denominator that's going to lean probably more towards these types of principles, principles based approach, if I could call it that, as opposed to very hard and fast rules of regulatory implementation on the other. Now, I want to close on this by bringing it back to the stakeholder issue is that yes, I think we're going to see probably tears of ambition, different types of agreements. And the ones that are more principles based, are going to create that much more of a need for stakeholder engagement. And that crucial phase of turning the principle into a national regulatory framework. That that creates both the need and I think the scope frankly, for much more engagement as opposed to a bunch of trade negotiators getting in a room and from the top down deciding factor, inverse heart, you know, black letter law, exactly what the rules of the road are gonna be. So it is a very textured landscape that's developing we, you know, which connects to the topic of this round of discussion, modularity that goes beyond just this kind of layering on new topics. And indeed, the

point you make about China is an important one because when you look at trade

negotiations in the WTO, for example, you try to think, how do you get hard commitments, the Chinese are gonna accept on data flows, data localization, those kinds of issues, that will also be acceptable to the US and the, you know, American business community. It's pretty hard to see how that works. If you've got a modular kind of approach the a DA, you can bring them into the tent and try and build. What's more convergence over time whether that happens whether that's commercially meaningful is another question but it's interesting option for this. Let's let's just talk a little bit other interesting issues that are covered. These things are all multi issue. They cover lots of different everything from 5G and 6G. To, as you say, artificial intelligence. Is it any any thoughts on what have been the key issues that maybe have been progressed by taking this kind of approach, relative to

other kinds of frameworks like traditional trade agreements? Have we

seen that PDAs or even depots, DPS allow further movement or better levels of agreement in principle to try to work towards something on some key issues than other kinds of agreements? Have we seen real progress that's interesting and important in the issues in particular? Anybody have any thought on that and just curious?

On that

look, I think it's a very interesting question. And I think, you know, there's such a broad range of topics that's covered by by these agreements. And in fact, we've seen this relatively short lifespan of this new style of greement, which has really only been as much as said since the deeper which was the first of these kicked off in 2020. There has actually been a growing suite of issues that they've captured that in terms of sort of concrete successes, I think it's it's relatively early days. You know, probably the area where we've seen the greatest sort of most binding and substantive rules. Hard law,

if you like, has been in the

digital trade facilitation area. So things like paperless trade or E invoicing, particularly in the bilateral agreements or partnerships. There has been quite a lot of movement to really build out in that area, put in binding rules, run pilots, so for example, between Australia and Singapore, they have a very detailed work programme on on paperless trade and a number of other areas. Like digital identities that have really tried to put some flesh on the bones of, as Rick says, at what's otherwise as sort of more of a principled approach or a kind of broad framework approach. But in some of the more innovative areas like AI or Data Innovation, or, you know, there's the sort of more frontier technologies I guess you could say, really, what's happened so far has just been creating this platform for a conversation rather than putting in place hard law but that's really you know, to use a kind of a digital metaphor there it's it's a feature not a bag because as as a number of others have commented, you know, in this area, nobody really knows what what is the the perfect you know, regulation in this space, because technology itself is so new and is also evolving, that, you know, it's a process of sort of learning as we go along. So, I do

think that, you know,

it's interesting to see this expanding universe of topics that are covered. Probably we'll need to see in a few years time whether it can actually generate finding more. But also there are a number of

aspects that

despite the agility of this new model that is bringing in things like AI and some of the hard infrastructure like submarine cables and so on, as well. It's not even rapid enough to keep up with I think some of the new kinds of technologies that we're seeing emerging. So for example, quantum or, you know, I mean, there are there are more things on the horizon that even even these agreements have not foreseen. But particularly in the case of deeper there, it is actually intended to be a living agreement, which is another novelty, unlike the sort of more traditional FTA that very deliberately it's designed to be able to add in new modules to reflect emerging technologies or emerging concerns, presumably, as well as, you know, one could foresee not just on the new technologies, but new concerns for instance, around misinformation or other dimensions of cybersecurity, for example, where, you know, we may see emerging issues that the parties consider need to be regulated in some sort of cross border sense that could be added into these agreements as well. Platforming of these issues

is really

a key aspect for the standpoint of long term view in terms of the institutionalization of governance mechanisms in the effort to build cooperation on some of these diverse issues rather than jumping directly to trying to get a short term agreements that are binding and so on. Any other thoughts just on? Yeah, Mark to go ahead. Just wanting

to make a comment on sort of the fact that there are several new issues that

have been included in this agreement. I think that it's always important to remind ourselves when sort of these agreements and in what context these agreements emerge, that is with the fact that we don't have friendly multilateral trade rules that are specifically dedicated to trading in the 21st century. So digital trade, we do have some rules that apply that were negotiated 2030 years ago, they were negotiated. Split you could cover certain aspects of digital trade. But multilaterally speaking, we did not have currently a multilateral agreement on digital trade. And one of the reasons why we started seeing these type of agreement is because more and more countries realize that because of you know, the crisis in multilateral negotiations, and I've seen sort of, also the difficulties of negotiating these rules a pro lateral level, we kind of like it was necessary to discuss them in a ways that deals with the alternative to at least discuss some of these issues, to keep up with what was happening in on the ground. I think one of the constant battles that we face in digital trade and we were talking about law before, is the fact that these technologies progress at a pace that is in any way much faster than regulation can be. And I think that probably these agreements sort of should be viewed also with that with the idea that, hey, we don't have multilateral rules, we need to start kind of like thinking about everything that we need to cover and could be relevant to trade in in these 20 Digital trainings. 21st century, and therefore, it could be to some of these issues, some of these modules, more sort of a way of let's at least think that this could be some of the issues that we may need to face much more in the future. And I think that it was in my opinion, it was also Institute interesting to see that had like, you know, the included in DeFi. In particular, they included a module on emerging technologies, but at the same time they have a module on small and medium enterprises, we think is very important. There is a tendency to think about digital trade and technologies as something that is somehow driven and only relates to big multinationals. The reality is trade on the ground is the vast majority of companies that trade internationally, are actually small and medium enterprises. So I think that having like an entire module dedicated to that, and in a way kind of pinpointing that out, I think it's very significant, again, in the broader context of what international trade relations are and what international trade law is. Thank you. You're absolutely right about that. We're getting

closer to the top of the hour,

at which point I'd like to open it up to everybody who was here for to join the conversation. Let me just ask as a sort of last quick brown punted into a broader kind of context and number one, looking forward if we were to have this meeting, five years on this topic five years from now, what would your expectation be about sets which this kind of approach has grown in route come more significant and also just more generally? I mean, how do we think about if somebody comes to you skeptically and says, Why do these things matter? How would we be able to tell them do you think in five years anybody have a crystal ball kind of sensibility about the weird how this fits into the or could fit into the larger evolution, international order on digital issues?

Somebody who hasn't spoken recently

but I could give you a sonic this, I mean,

no, multilateral is just getting more and more difficult. You know, as a general matter, as I think we've already identified in this discussion, and thus in the trade space, as in others, the variable geometry, the plurilateral modular types of approaches are in the ascendant. So I, you know,

I don't have a crystal ball on this, but I would certainly expect that because of that general

secular trend in international relations, that we're likely to see this approach be taken up more widely, more creatively, creating more and more texture, you know, variability, variability and the trade architecture. That's from that's going to state to state basis. Let me use this occasion just to also talk about an interdisciplinary basis.

I'm I'm here, the ILO and I can tell you that there are digital services,

issues, digital digital trading services issues that have a very strong implication for labor regulation. That's a question whether there

whether should not be some modules, so to speak, that deal with the way countries treat gig workers, for example, digital

labor platforms, and various aspects of their rights. There are universal rights or core labor standards in this regard, are observed to a greater or lesser degree, by countries around the world. There are issues around the application of algorithmic tools that surveil workers that are used in performance evaluation, that are sometimes used in recruitment and selection procedures that have you know, inherent potential for bias. And so, issues about transparency human in the loop considerations, this this this this topic of digital trade and services goes well beyond the bread and butter trenches, ecommerce facilitation stuff that the the field was built upon, and that is now moving into other frontier technologies. So I think that this is, this is another dimension by which the crystal ball may suggest we're going to see a proliferation or sort of a broadening of this approach. I totally agree with everything you just said, Rick, I think we looking

forward to broad multilateral frameworks are going to end up being more of the floor. Then on top of that, you have to have more textured variable kinds of approaches for different clusters. The risk, of course, that trade people always raises. If you get a proliferation of different agreements with different parties, different rules, you end up with this kind of spaghetti bowl of frameworks that the private sector doesn't know how to operate across borders and so on. That's always one of the big issues with this kind of approach. But it seems that the evolution is targeted and much more varied kind of battle. There folks want to jump in on this last kind of effective Yeah, Stephanie. Yeah, thanks. Bill.

I think the point that you you and Rick has just made as a really

critical one.

If if we're looking at you know, what are the five year implications or 10 year implications for business

and civil society?

I mean, the fact is, that we are seeing the sort of regulatory overdrive to use the phrase that the global trade alert digital trade alert, Simon Internet and friends have have used, I mean, we are seeing a huge amount of new regulatory action in this space by governments. So like it or not, you know, regulators are taking action on this. And in the digital economy, you know, there really isn't any such thing as a sort of a national digital economy. You know, it's it's fundamentally has a sort of cross border impact because of the Agile nature of digital trade and Digital Services trade in particular. And so, you know, I think one thing that we are likely to see as this ongoing sort of pressure for greater fragmentation of the digital economy, and actions that governments might take, which may not even necessarily be aimed at trade, could have the effect of essentially curtailing others abilities to trade or adding cost and sort of red tape to to cross border activity as well. So I think there's a really compelling case to keep pursuing regulatory coherence or you know, trying to reduce the frictions across borders in this space. And and you know, mechanisms like like the DEA is or deeper are an important way of trying to address that. But one of my concerns is that we have the deeper which is a kind of a mechanism for cross border interoperability, open scenes, but then we're also starting to see a lot more of these bilateral agreements that are very similar and and mostly very ambitious, but do have nuances that from a business perspective, in particular, actually will end up adding costs. I mean, there are some very important shared sort of outcomes based principles, but equally, the way individual countries might be regulating, could still create greater agility. That's a sort of a cost or a friction or a headache or a challenge, particularly for small businesses. And the sad thing about that is one of the incredible things that the digital economy promises is this quotient clusion potential so small businesses can essentially leapfrog some of the structural impediments that have made it hard to trade through digital technologies or digital trade, developing economies could potentially do the same. But the more friction that we build in through regulation, the less those those groups or countries are going to be able to participate. And I think one of the really significant challenges that we face in the next few years is going to be well, I mean, it's fine if you're New Zealand, or the United States or Canada or, you know, Europe, you're probably going to be able to operate in the global economy. But if you're a developing country, a lot of these countries don't even have some of the most basic regulatory building blocks for the digital economy in place or, you know, really a long way behind some of the the developed countries in that space. And that is in their businesses at quite a significant disadvantage to engage in what should be this this amazing economic growth opportunity is a digital economy. So I think, you know, the five year vision is going to be fissures, ongoing pressures for fragmentation and the sort of the spaghetti bowl as you say, but also there's real challenge around inclusion that needs to be addressed, to guess you know, sort of bolster broader economic growth because the other thing that we haven't really touched on is digital is not just a small you know, specialized segment anymore. It is integral to everything. economic activity and trade, and increasingly so. So it's not just a kind of a niche interest. It's something that actually impacts on all economic activity. Do you agree? fact that's what I

argue in my classes in school.

All right. We've gotten past the top of the hour, so maybe I'll see if anybody wants to jump in. But I just I just want to flag in particular the point. It's definitely made about developing countries. The global south and its role in this whole environment is something that I think really does merit much more concerted discussion, and it's something that I think, probably will we should do a session on in this series as well, because I think we don't get enough attention. But let's just try and see if there's some folks in the room who'd like to join into the conversation. Have any questions, thoughts, comments, wants to pick issues to throw on the table, and so on. Welcome any and all that we're a multitrack modular event here. So we welcome all forms of engagement.

Anybody while people are cogitating, let me just maybe pursue

this last point, a little bit more than the prospects for growth. I mean, people were involved in doing deep end, Stephanie, you're one of them. And end the idea that you could essentially start to build out this kind of approach to promote or open multilateral agreement that are getting more parties to sign on, and cetera, et cetera. But then we see the contradictory point about the spaghetti bowl impact, what happens if the rules are highly variable across countries? So I want to things I'm just wondering about if you look at who's been party to this so far, with the DEA has been mostly countries in Asia Pacific, Canada's seeking to join,

we haven't seen for example, the United States

moving to get involved news, there have been think tanks in Washington who said us should be doing these kinds of things. But seeing the movement so far do we see over the long term that maybe helping countries that have not been engaged in other regions or industrialized countries to start to get on board these kinds of works that this framework could kind of approach could grow into a by agglomeration into something that provides more international order?

Anybody have a thought on possibility of others getting on board this stuff?

I know me has written some fantastic

pieces on this, but maybe I'll

just kick things off if you like. And I think we are seeing some quite interesting engagement in the Asia Pacific from developing economies. I mean, obviously some of them are party to the region's, the A's or deeper, but we've also seen, particularly in Southeast Asia, as in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as a very active participant in digital

economy rulemaking, as the end itself has

had a very, sort of lively programme of work on this and has recently agreed that it's going to negotiate a digital economy framework agreement that you mentioned in your introduction bill, that builds on an E commerce agreement that that they they waited quite a few years ago now but has only really relatively recently been implemented, but it includes a lot of deeper or da like aspects, much less fleshed out even then then what's in the deeper but but you know, at least gives a nod to the importance of this holistic approach the kind of broad agenda of digital economy issues, and I guess we can anticipate that the differ will build on that with a with a you know, a kind of a Southeast Asian flavor to it, reflecting the processes that have been going on there. But then we also have this interesting new model that the United States as promoting, as you mentioned, Bill, they're not in any of the D A'S as such, but IPF the Indo Pacific economic framework, actually has a digital component and its trade pillar, which you know, obviously no, no you know, white smoke yet on on that being concluded, but as I understand it, it includes a lot of it's a deeper like or DEA like elements, the sort of more modern iteration or the digital sort of digital roles or kind of the standings or platforms for a conversation. And it includes some quite interesting countries, a lot of those Southeast Asian, sort of allies of the United States, or countries of interest to the United States. But also, you know, other surprisingly Fiji is a member of that. And, you know, there's, I think one of the big challenges on the development front is how to support the engagement of Pacific Island countries in the digital economy. That's something that Australia and New Zealand have been quite focused on. Probably not not very prominent in your part of the world, but you know, there are there are these areas, geographies, if you like, whether it's in the Pacific or developing Asia or Africa where there really is, you know, a big sort of development and engagement challenge, and I think it'll be interesting to see how we can bring those countries into this conversation. One interesting aspect of the Singapore Australia Day is that it actually has a provision on regional capacity building for engagement and digital trade, which I think is something very creditable that, you know, other countries should be thinking about as well because it's very clear that even wealthy developed economies struggle to engage meaningfully in this and understand the the multi dimensions of these issues. And, you know, there's a really important sort of hub of work that needs

to be done to build the capacity of developing countries to engage.

We leave it there. I think the ASEAN thing is a

potentially really important

example, if you get 10 countries with that market size, starting to follow something comparable to this model. I think that could really add us to it but still, it's very much Asia seems to be the Asia Pacific seems to be the focal point. Of a lot of this activity. And I wonder, you know, if you couldn't see it, if this mile would be applicable, it might be taken up in the other side of the planet, or the north south bases and so on this? These are questions I think, are some consideration going forward? Yeah. Stephanie mentioned that you've done some work on these kinds of issues. To you on anything at this point, or just

one thing I'm very conscious about is when we talk about developing countries

we actually talking about a large variety of countries because there's a lot of variation among developing countries. And ASEAN is a great example because even though it is still Asia centric, but it is a collection of countries which are at very different stages of development, there are Least Developed economies and there are extremely well the economies like Singapore in the same association. But I think they also have a long history of being very pragmatic and incrementally building upon things. So the whole ecommerce agenda is actually very old in ASEAN. They have gradually built upon it and over several years and now they have reached a point where they think they're in a position to negotiate a digital economy framework agreement. But if I look at developing countries as a whole, and by that I also mean developing countries in South Asia and Africa In South America. That there is perhaps some skepticism as well because a lot of countries are conscious about signing treaties where they think they will lose some of their autonomy because the feeling is that if we sign these agreements, then we lose the ability to protect our domestic sector or to promote our digital sector. So So I think the incentives are not necessarily properly aligned yet. And that's partly because not many developing countries have participated in these digital economy agreements. So I think if the way forward to getting more digital loping digital economies to participate, is to have the right kind of provisions and that would mean that you might need to go into very substantive provisions on technical assistance and capacity building, not just a high level provision that we will do that or you might need to think of very strong revisions that meaningfully provide for some kind of special and differential treatment among different countries at different stages of digital development. And we haven't seen that yet. Neither, you know, in the plural lateral negotiations of the WTO nor in even in like agreements such as the CP TPP, which involve, again, a variety of countries and also not in any of the D 's. Although there are bright rays of hope, right, you have a provision on digital inclusion that opens up doors to do many things, and a lot of the richer countries are now open to signing like more informal things like mo use on the side of more formal treaties agreeing to do certain things or agreeing to exchange knowledge or shake up share to share certain capacity, capacity building with other countries. But the question is how much these informal mechanisms can really replace the lack of trust sometimes between richer and less less, less rich countries? I'm not so sure I'm a bit skeptical, but one can one should be positive I guess, as well, by looking at these instruments. In principle, you would think that that capacity to do

things like capacity building and is greater in a way in this kind of modular kind of approach. I mean, in the trade world, often you end up with having to make like special exceptions for a special and differential treatment and saying okay, countries can ramp up their their commitments over time, but you're giving them but here, you're here. You're like baking it in from the front end, was a question from Judith Hellerstein. She was Go ahead. Yes. Hi, students House team. So I wanted to also pick up what what Stephanie

was saying and others is that especially with the Pacific Island countries, I think is really important to work with the Pacific Island forum, because that is what got to dive is really where the countries are working on and I was working with the there's a there was a Pacific ICT ministerial that New Zealand, Australia were part of and that is a lot of their focus on digital economy. That's one of the main focus a and especially if you want to get a lot of countries on board and the Pacific should really be working closely with the Pacific Island forum or other countries, because that is where a lot of the different countries can get alignment with them. A lot of them do, especially with the Pacific ICT ministerial, which was led by Papua New Guinea but it's going to be next hosted by New Caledonia is that they are working closely with Pacific island with the Pittsburgh islands on and then that in bringing everyone together. And so I think that these regional groups have been aware that capacity building is done. As well as with the Asia Pacific Tella community. But I would say if you wanted to trade agreements across the Pacific, these are a little forgotten form or other related ones to get the capacity built in to get everyone and get buy in. Because without the buy in. You're not gonna get that.

I think it's a very good point you listen. regionalization is certainly a major

part of the trajectory we seem to be on. Anybody want to reply to that point.

I guess the provisions on digital inclusion, which allow for that kind of stakeholder

engagement in some of these agreements could be a starting point for the proposal that you'd put forward.

And just to add, there's actually a trade agreement between Australia

and New Zealand and a number of Pacific Island forum countries, which is called pace or PLAs, which does have some provisions that, in particular, look at digital trade enablement. So there's sort of the paperless trade and kind of using digital technologies. Pardon me to enhance goods trade, which I think you know, has has a lot of promise for Pacific island nations that can leverage digital technologies essentially to to get more value out of the goods exporting that they're doing, but you know, there's such a body of work that needs to be done to enable digitally delivered services for those economies but but even just building some of the basic digital regulations domestically that they need around cybersecurity, for example, or online consumer protection, but not sort of particularly glamorous work, but absolutely fundamental to ensuring that those economies are able to participate in a sort of safe and trusted and enabling way in a more global digital economy. Thanks, I think that's absolutely right. We no question in the chat

for Reese

asking how digital economy agreements might contribute to environmental safety, which I think also ties back into the kind of flexibility of these frameworks and ability to tackle new kinds of issues that in a narrow trade, traditional trade approach become a bit more challenging. Anybody have any thoughts on the on the environment, side what's possible

maybe looking at the environmental aspect or well sorry to keep monopolizing.

Just to chip in. I mean, I think there's a very interesting thread of sort of thinking and policy development and and business development that's happening at the moment, which is how to leverage digital technologies. To achieve good or better environmental outcomes and greater sustainability. You know, ranging across things like using technology for verifiable ESG credentials or you know, sustainability using digitally delivered services for environmental outcomes. So sort of environmental services to use the, the technical, sort of trade, trade jargon. And I think, you know, there's there's a very clear potential for technology to deliver good environmental outcomes through greater innovation. And so I suppose, in that sense, something that these new agreements or new style of trade rules will enable is being able to realize the potential of digital technologies for those environmental outcomes. But I think it's fair to say that no, none of these agreements to date have had a specific sort of environment,

module or provision or a dedicated element. It's really

more digital technologies as an enabler of those outcomes rather than a specific a specific aspect of digitalization as such, you can certainly see a possibility with

this modular approach that if, indeed the members wanted to evolve

towards addressing environmental stuff, this kind of framework provides kind of like, non threatening way to get into those more difficult issues. So I think the point is that it's the approach could be highly relevant. There's a question for David Allen. David Go ahead. As like fundamentally

an outsider observing, I have to first of all notice

that this has been a fascinating look, I think vital look really, at what might be called the dynamics of international organizing might say the how the process of evolution we're able to look inside and see how there's movement from

rivulets into see where this goes into something more mainstream. If I can ask and actually

building very less like the table here.

Building up a little bit.

Outside or looking at this notices one fundamental that agreements, on the one side had been about free trade and on the other hand, free trade has been used as a mechanism for those who are large and dominant to increase their dominance and take advantage. Of those who aren't so strong. Looking at

assists pas and so forth that you have described here.

There is a suggestion that at least the smaller economies are finding ways to

promote parents is the word that we used at the beginning. There's no doubt that the power dynamics in which the big of the powerful

try to take advantage is that things will continue. Despite that,

environment has come up here has been the suggestion throughout the discussion that

factors besides

just increasing one's take up the

potential out there other factors such as the environment, such as the word inclusions been used, and not in the sense that it's sometimes used. Here in the US, there is a large push right now for social responsibility by businesses, which is almost shocking. Notice from the Dean of the Harvard Business School, that this is what the school is going to be looking at the social impact, not just the money making impact. I'm curious whether or not those of you in the middle of this. See there's some possibility there'll be a widening of objectives as this evolutionary process goes forward, sorry for a bit of length there was a good question David or appreciate it and of course, that

we're all outsiders at some level unless we're trade negotiators. So please, anybody have thoughts in response to that? We have one more question was asked in the chat

that I'll throw out to you and then we'll conclude

anybody have a handle on how to dress the David's?

Shall I let that linger and then we'll see if we can wrap into the other. The other last

question from Dennis said, What's the best way to monitor outcomes of agreements a special sources follow individual agreement arrangements and trends to monitor outcomes and track progress has really been made. Either those two kinds of things maybe as to wrap into a concluding thought and then we'll, we'll wrap up for today.

Smartphone had the last question. I don't necessarily know if maybe it's not

necessarily about how to monitor sort of the outcomes because maybe we are at a stage where some of these governments are really new. So we don't have yet proper impact assessment to my knowledge, then, of course, correct me if I'm wrong, but you know, some of these agreements have entered into force like these year or last year or a couple of years ago. So we still need to see exactly the outcome of this. But I've noticed, for example, there has been a study, readily recent study about trying to assess the readiness, da readiness, of countries, maybe to sign these sort of DBAs and I think that link this links a little bit probably to the discussion that we were having before about how to engage countries at different levels of development from from those that have been the pioneers in in developing the yeas and, and deeper for example, so I think that probably at the moment, we maybe we may need to adapt previous instruments. Maybe economist have a better view on this and can discuss more on this but I think we can maybe use similar instruments about impact assessments again, to figure out sort of outcomes of the negotiations of this agreement, but at the same time, we also have some people have already some scholars have already attempted at least to figure out how ready countries are you know how much policy alignments that can be across different modules. This is what they have tried to do. And I think that this is the interesting new approach, the probably respect to maybe traditional assessment of these agreements. ex post and accented probably, assessing module my bottom by module would allow maybe to understand sort of, maybe what are some countries will be better off tackling sort of modules as opposed to others? With the question about sort of taking into consideration potential, you know, other issues. My only point would be that having agreements like D D, D A's, and Deepa has done one thing, which is to basically dealing issues. So we're focusing on certain issues and that will be so the negotiations will only be on digital trade. We don't really tackle other issues, but I think that something that has emerged from the discussion for sure is that when we discuss now digital trade in general, and especially some of the newest agreement us topics like AI, definitely not remaining in the realm of trade. If we talk about AI, I mean ethical principles related to AI governance, that is something that we'll touch upon that I mean, the you know, it was we were discussing before about even labor, you know, potential effects on labor of certain technologies and AI is the one that is most likely going to have job displacement effect, raise a lot of concerns about labor as well. So maybe I haven't necessarily addressed your question fully, but I think that this is something that we may need to consider. I think actually that was helpful and responsive. It's

definitely the use of remote to the end of the year. Stephanie and Rick fey just get things from you guys drawing out. Can I go Can I go first because I gotta, I gotta drop off here. So

last thought here is that I you know, I would watch regulatory cooperation in this space. The real issue in many, many, many of these modules is what the regulatory approaches are going to be how consistent how faithful to the principles they will be. If one is interested in monitoring things. It's not going to be sufficient just to sort of do an analysis of what the print the elements of the agreements themselves say and how well they match up or don't. We're really going to be entering into phase where we need to take a look at much more robust regulatory dialogue and cooperation. And I think this is actually a very good area for research. I mean, I think we've got a number of academics, including you on the on the line today, Bill, and that would do a great service to the entire field would add a level of, dare I say transparency to all of this process, and so I would watch that as a very important element of the development of this field and many thanks for inviting me on the on the webinar. I've got a drop off Best regards to everyone including particularly you, Bill. Patrick,

it's definitely a closing thoughts and then I'll just very quickly to say that one one study or a couple of

studies that have been done really interesting by Kathy Swaminathan for CSIS have looked at what is the impact of the digital provisions of CP TPP, which is sort of the foundation for a lot of these days. Definitely worth looking at out, but also to say on the broader sort of impacts. The members of the inclusive trade Action Group, which is New Zealand, Canada and Chile, have recently done an assessment of the CP TPP including their digital provisions. What does that mean from a sort of progressive trade policy lens, so for women, for small businesses, for indigenous communities, so also with having a look at that, I'm trying to unpick some of the sort of more civil society inclusion,

aspects of

the end and sort of rights based aspects of these agreements as well. So just to flag that, that is something that people are starting to think about. Thank you very much. We're running over so

I'm gonna cut

it here. And we appreciate everybody's participation thought it was very interesting conversation and an important topic, we will carry the conversation forward into the IETF meeting and Kyoto and look at how these things can be related to fragmentation. That's on October 8 Day Zero of the IGF they will also join us. Thanks, Jason Buck White's, the executive director of CIT AI for making this happen. And our next meeting will be November 15. You won't remember that date for now, but you'll get an announcement when we are doing our next session. And hopefully we'll see you all again there. too. Or some future event. Everybody and bye bye.

Alright, thanks.

Thanks, everybody.