Great expectations: quantifying the potential economic impact of the WTO Agreement on E-commerce

As digital trade becomes an increasingly vital component of the global economy, identifying the impact of wider international cooperation on digital trade issues becomes a growing policy imperative. This paper seeks to provide a quantitative analysis of the potential economic impacts of concluding the WTO Agreement on E-commerce (AoE). Immediate adoption of the AoE by the 71 economies that currently support its incorporation is projected to raise their GDP by 0.43% and trade by 0.97% with global GDP increasing by 0.14% and global trade by 0.58%. For each year that the implementation is delayed, USD 159 billion is being left on the table (cumulative USD 2.4 trillion until 2040). The quantitative analysis also indicates that if the AoE were to be extended to all WTO Member States, the global economic benefits would nearly quadruple from a 0.14% to a 0.51% increase in GDP and a 2.3% increase in global trade, or USD 8.7 trillion by 2040, mostly favouring low- and lower-middle-income economies, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. As WTO Members continue to deliberate about how best to incorporate the AoE into the WTO architecture, the findings from this paper underscore the economic benefits of enacting the AoE and the importance of expanding participation as much as possible to maximise its development potential.