Reviving the trade and competition nexus in digital platform governance

Abstract Data-driven advantages facilitate practices that consolidate market power and enable large digital platforms to determine competitive conditions in digital trade. Recent digital competition cases provide useful examples for rethinking the relationship between competition policy and digital trade law in the digital economy. The first part of this article illustrates how domestic competition regimes can have substantial cross-border effects on data flows and digital trade. It argues that domestic measures addressing platform practices such as self-preferencing, bundling, or data-driven discrimination may alter market access conditions for foreign digital service suppliers or redirect data flows across borders. The second part identifies the notable disconnect that persists between competition policy and digital trade law. Although provisions in existing digital trade chapters gradually intersect with competition regulation, such engagement remains peripheral rather than substantive. In addition, modern free trade agreements reflect a structural separation between digital trade liberalization and competition policy. This separation is increasingly difficult to sustain in the context of digital platform governance. The third part examines the drivers and challenges of reviving the trade and competition nexus. It explains why the most recent World Trade Organization Joint Statement Initiative on E-commerce text contains no digital competition disciplines, emphasizing that sector-specific competition disciplines require broad political support from both developed and developing countries, which is currently lacking. It also highlights the core doctrinal challenges in adapting traditional competition law to digital markets. Against this background, the article points out the experimental and incremental approaches under Digital Economy Agreements. Although these developments remain fragmented, soft-law oriented, and primarily cooperation-based, their real function is to facilitate soft-law, non-justiciable coordination as a modest experiment that may inform the development of more substantial competition disciplines in future international trade agreements.