The Dilemma of Digital Free Trade

A lot of international trade takes place over the Internet, where digital goods and services are bought and sold across national borders. But international trade policy is still catching up. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 12-nation agreement the Obama administration hopes to complete this year, will contain new types of rules governing digital commerce in a bid to ensure governments don’t block bits and bytes the way they’ve slowed down trade of physical goods with tariffs.

At the heart of those rules is an effort by the US to persuade countries to do away with laws requiring data be stored on local servers. Leading that push is Robert Holleyman, a deputy US trade representative and former software industry lobbyist. It’s his job to head off the kinds of measures that make moving data harder and more expensive.