With a large and increasing presence of the Internet in global trade and investment, there is a growing interest in examining the synergy or conflict arising between these issues. There is a need to identify trade rules and practices that are sufficient to deal with emerging issues, and the new trade rules, modes of common understanding and cooperative mechanisms that would be required as the Internet becomes a larger part of the trade and investment domain.
This paper discusses these aspects as well as the new trade-related concerns that need to be addressed, including the difficulty of determining jurisdiction and rules of origin, the classification of products and relevant disciplines applicable to them, complications arising for competition policy and regulatory practices due to bundling of products enabled by Internet and new communications technologies.
