The New Rules on Digital Trade in Latin American Regional Trade Agreements

The rise of information and communication technologies is changing productive structure and trade relations worldwide. As stated by the WTO “digital innovation is creating new products, new markets, and creatively disrupting our old brick-and-mortar economy. These digital technologies promise to transform global trade by reducing search and information costs, by creating new sources of comparative advantage, and enabling new players to emerge”. Digital trade has transformed the way products and services are exchanged, arising new challenges for countries, which policymakers need to tackle in order to benefit from this new conditions for their development. This paper reviews how new trade negotiations in Latin America had deal with Digital Trade. We look in particular those commitments included within the Pacific Alliance economies, ie. Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, in order to identify the way in which these countries are facing the challenges derived from digital transformation.