Economic research and trade policy analysis

This report was approved by Marion Jansen (Director, Trade and Agriculture Directorate, OECD) and Ralph Ossa (Director, Economic Research and Statistics Division, WTO). The authors of the report are Andrea Andrenelli (OECD), Eddy Bekkers (WTO), Javier López González (OECD), Gabrielle Marceau (WTO) and Roger So (WTO). We are grateful for the useful comments received from Julia Nielson, Susan Stone, Clarisse Girot, and Frank Van Tongeren from the OECD, Johanna Hill, Bright Okogu, Ralph Ossa, Marc Bacchetta and Antonia Carzaniga from the WTO, as well as Anabel Gonzalez (IADB) and Robert Teh. We also acknowledge the useful discussions at the: G7 Scientific Roundtable on Digital Policy and Data Governance in the age of AI held in June 2024, and the comments received during the BIICL 2023 Annual WTO Conference on Trade and Technology: Challenges and Opportunities and the 27th GTAP Conference in Bordeaux in 2023.

Hydrogen and hydrogen-derived commodities (ammonia, methanol and e-kerosene) are expected to play a crucial role in the energy transition and – in particular – the decarbonisation of many hard-to-abate end uses across industry and heavy-duty transport.

Cross-border data flows underpin today’s economic and social interactions. They help people connect with family and friends located in different geographical locations; they support research addressing global challenges (as was the case during the COVID-19 pandemic); they enable the co-ordination of production along global supply chains; and they allow firms, notably smaller ones, and people to access global markets. In sum, cross-border data flows have become the lifeblood of modern day social and economic activities.

There are manifold reasons economies are reviewing their data policy. These include considerations related to privacy and data protection, national security, regulatory control or audit, digital security, and also new forms of digital industrial policy (Casalini, López González and Nemoto, 2021). While there are legitimate reasons for the diversity in regulations across economies, the regulatory landscape that underpins cross-border data flows and data localisation is becoming increasingly complex.

Both the simple and complex tariff scenarios discussed above indicate that a level of human verification is still ultimately required to ensure the quality of results after the automated tariff transposition, depending on the quality of the original tariffs datasets.

The regular work of the Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) section in the Trade Policies Review Division (TPRD) of the World Trade Organization is one among several statistical work streams that regularly require tariff line HS transposition.