Digitization has greatly expanded the scope of trade, and with it the scope of trade law. But the regulatory framework, although growing in bilateral and regional fora, is highly dynamic and remains fragmented, increasing the challenges facing digital trade law.

International trade law, organized around the goods-services dichotomy, is about to meet the Internet of Things (IoT). How will rules written for the world of 1994 fare in a world of talking teapots and connected cars? IoT will especially raise governmental concerns with respect to privacy, security, and standards. Indeed, governments have already begun taking adverse measures against foreign IoT suppliers based not on the hardware, but on the digital features of the products. This paper argues that IoT devices comprise both goods and services, therefore calling into application multiple WTO disciplines, with the specific agreements that are applicable dependent on the particular governmental measure subject to challenge.

Although it provides limited normative guidance, the General Assembly’s recent resolution, “The right to privacy in the digital age,” signals both renewed international interest in the human right to privacy as well as a commitment by United Nations (UN) institutions to explore the meaning of this right in the digital age.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. disfavors American corporations. While largely unshackling foreign corporations from the risk of being haled before an American court to answer for human rights abuses abroad, the decision keeps American corporations constrained by human rights law. This inconsistency exists because application of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), as announced in Kiobel, turns on whether a corporation’s actions “touch and concern” the United States. American corporations are simply far more likely to satisfy that standard than foreign corporations.