United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement: Digital Trade Provisions NAFTA 2.0 meets the Internet
The United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) enters into effect on July 1, 2020. Nicknamed “NAFTA 2.0” because it replaces the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the USMCA addresses a number issues that had not been tackled by its predecessor, conceived and negotiated almost 30 years ago, at the down of the commercial Internet. In its Chapter 19 – Digital Trade, the USMCA focuses on the trading of digital products, such as computer programs, image, text, video, sound recording or other products that are digitally encoded and can be transmitted electronically. Several Articles focus on cybersecurity, privacy, data localization, and cross-border data transfers, which should be of interest to cloud providers and cloud users. Other areas of interest include, protection against unsolicited commercial communication, source code protection, prohibition against the application of customs duties, and internet platform liability for third party content.
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