23. The TPP and the Digital Economy the Agreement’s Potential as a Benchmark for Future Rule-Making

The way things are quickly changing in the internet economy is important from the standpoint of regulation (and thus government actors and policymakers), since legislative and regulatory frameworks that are too restrictive may tend to inhibit the emergence of new business models or may impede the adoption of innovative products and solutions that have the potential to disrupt established business models and those interests that are behind them. This is in fact the very problem we continue to encounter today and that confront a range of recent innovations, but is particularly visible in the battles being waged over different platforms and services that have emerged in the so-called “sharing economy” [For more on the sharing economy see Telles (2016)]. This chapter examines some of the negotiating outcomes achieved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other negotiating fora on rules for the digital economy. This chapter also discusses whether or not the tentative negotiating outcomes achieved in the TPP can be considered the starting point for an emerging international consensus on these rules. Although now very probably defunct as an economic integration project, the TPP still constitutes a helpful starting point given that it nevertheless constitutes an agreed body of rules concluded between a very diverse set of developing and advanced economies with a distinctly divergent set of objectives and approaches when it comes to regulating certain aspects of the internet economy.