Introduction to the Nexus of Digital Trade and Data Privacy

Based on its well-established multilateral regulatory framework, international trade law is called upon to address the digital transformation of the global economy. However, a (re)contextualisation of international trade against the backdrop of a global digital economy means that new dimensions of cross-border trade must be accommodated in pre-existing rule-based trade governance. By virtue of the inherently global architecture of the Internet, the protection of natural persons in the processing, storage, and dissemination of personal data—operations that are fundamental to a digital economy—is necessarily intertwined with trade rules. Moreover, the importance of data as a resource exacerbates the tension between the economic liberalisation of the processing and cross-border transfer of personal data and regulatory restrictions thereof for non-economic reasons—most notably for the protection of fundamental rights. This chapter develops and outlines the resulting nexus between digital trade and data privacy in the context of international trade and provides an introduction to the resulting research questions.