Search results

This open access book examines how international trade agreements apply to domestic regulations on cross-border data flows and then proposes a multilayered framework to align international trade law with evolving norms and practices in global data governance. Digital trade and global data governance are at a unique crossroads, raising significant policy challenges. The book focuses on five policy areas at the interface of digital trade and global data governance: privacy, cybersecurity, governmental access to data, data divide, and competition. In five separate chapters, the book analyses how different types of domestic laws in each of these policy areas interface with existing provisions in international trade law. Thereafter, each of these chapters explores the challenges and possibilities for aligning international trade law with evolving norms, standards and best practices in that specific area of data regulation, both at the domestic and transnational level. Drawing upon these findings, the final chapter proposes a multilayered framework for aligning international trade law with evolving norms and practices in global data governance. The key message of the book is that international trade law can and should meaningfully align with and contribute to the development of transnational data governance norms and practices. It can also foster robust regulatory cooperation among various stakeholders of the digital economy. As the book offers a broad perspective on the significance of digital trade rules in a datafied world, it will benefit scholars, practitioners and policymakers working on digital trade and data regulation, helping its readers explore fresh avenues in the future development of digital trade rules. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

In the diverse American population, racial prejudice still remains a disturbing actuality. With the ever-increasing rate of Asians in the United States having better jobs, better income, and better education, Asian American women have never been at a better bargaining point to move their social standing in the society at a higher rank and aspire toward true assimilation. Intermarriage via selective desired traits that can help the Asian American woman trump their racial limitations, hence disadvantages. Okamoto's theoretical perspective to develop a boundary approach to the conventional winnowing hypothesis, intermarriage becomes an indicator of integration. Hall's eurogamy premise posits that most important of such desirable traits of prospective men being Euro-American can help Asian women blur the racial differences, hence bring them to the mainstream. This study suggests that in United States, there exists still substantial homogamy and in the absence of homogamy there is a similar pattern of exogamy, or more specifically eurogamy among Asian American women depicting and showing a clear tendency to marry up. It suggested that eurogamy is likely to continue as a means to marry up. Thus, there will be a continuation of said increase as the population of younger, better educated, independent Asian American women expands, hence resulting in the perfect marital assimilation.

The interface between trade and Internet governance is one of the most complex policy challenges in the current-day digital economy. This working paper highlights the following observations and findings on the delicate and complex relationship between international trade and the Internet: Recent preferential trade agreements (PTAs) such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and the Japan - Mongolia Economic Partnership Agreement (Japan - Mongolia FTA) contain legal provisions on cybersecurity, data protection, data localisation, consumer protection, net neutrality, spam control, and protection of online intellectual property, intended to facilitate electronic commerce and enable cross-border data flows. However, these provisions will also have a lasting impact on important aspects of Internet regulation. Similar provisions are likely to appear in other ongoing trade deals such as the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) and the renegotiation of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). International trade law does not contain adequate tools to address all aspects of Internet data flows because: (a) Internet is not just an important platform for trade, but also a site for political, cultural and social engagement - the latter aspects largely relate to the domestic regulatory space of countries and fall outside the scope of international trade law; (b) trade lawyers and policy-makers have insufficient knowledge of the technical and policy aspects of the Internet; and (c) the ideological divide between countries on issues including online censorship and surveillance, cybersecurity and privacy (which deeply impact cross-border data flows) cannot be resolved through international trade agreements. Yet, many issues related to Internet policy are also central to trade in digital economy, and thereby, not entirely avoidable in international trade law. Internet openness, security and trust are fundamental to the governance of Internet data flows. Measures designed to enforce Internet security and Internet trust, when implemented in a well-reasoned and proportionate manner, do not act as impediments to Internet openness - to the contrary, these measures play an essential role in facilitating efficient and secure data flows through the Internet. Thus, issues of cybersecurity, privacy and data protection can not only act as barriers to electronic commerce, but also facilitate electronic commerce - this perspective necessitates a reorientation of legal provisions in trade agreements. International trade institutions should explore both formal and informal means to engage with the Internet policy community in course of dialogues and/or trade negotiations within the World Trade Organization (WTO) as well as bilateral and plurilateral trade agreements, and in multistakeholder platforms such as the Internet Governance Forum. Further, international trade tribunals can rely on the technical and policy expertise of the Internet community to resolve certain complex trade disputes in international trade law.

Data localization laws are emerging as a pernicious form of non-tariff barrier which significantly harms the growth of trade in a digitally powered world. An International Political Economy approach provides a more comprehensive analysis of the policy rationale behind such laws, as compared to a purely economic approach, which only focuses on economic losses resulting from protectionism. On a closer analysis, it is found that different countries may have different policy rationales for implementing data localization laws – while some promote their domestic ICT industry through forced localization measures, others have concerns regarding national security, privacy, and ensuring sovereign control in the highly privatized world of internet governance. It is not always possible to demarcate the "protectionist" rationale from that of rational "data protection". To address data localization effectively and facilitate digital trade, it is not sufficient to negotiate for free flow of data in trade agreements without Governments and companies being open and transparent about the related issues of privacy, national security and consumer protection. Particularly, the role of US Government as well as leading US-based technology companies will be instrumental in this regard. At the same time, it may be necessary to develop policy initiatives both to encourage transparent and clear international standards on data security, as well as to enable higher levels of digital innovation in developing countries such that they can harness the benefits of evolving internet technologies.