On 28 March 2026, sixty-six World Trade Organization (WTO) Members declared their intention to adopt the WTO Agreement on Electronic Commerce (AEC), marking a significant, if imperfect, milestone in international digital trade law. This article examines the AEC’s origins, negotiating history, and substantive content. Drawing on leaked negotiation texts, it traces how the content of the agreement evolved across negotiating rounds and what countries made substantive contributions to these negotiations. The article highlights four noteworthy elements of the final text: the prominence of trade facilitation provisions, the commitment to a permanent e-commerce moratorium, aspirational Internet access commitments, and trust-enhancing provisions that constrain domestic regulatory autonomy. It also identifies two significant missed opportunities: the absence of substantive digital trade liberalization, including cross-border data flow commitments, source code protections, and non-discrimination obligations, and the failure to clarify electronic commerce’s relationship to existing WTO obligations. In doing so, the article aims to provide the reader with a better understanding of what the AEC actually achieved and where the parties missed opportunities to enhance global electronic commerce.
Legal Issues of Economic Integration