The rise of e-commerce presents both challenges and opportunities, leading to calls for multilateral trading rules at the WTO. The route to industrial development is changing and rules at the WTO
– the subject of this paper – will have important implications for how countries regulate these changes. Addressing these issues, this paper outlines the current e-commerce agenda at the
WTO, provides an overview of new proposals, identifies the economic incentives behind these proposals, and explains the probable outcomes at the upcoming 11th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC11) in Buenos Aires in December 2017. It then provides an assessment of how these rules could interact with development.
