The previous chapter by Sacha Wunsch-Vincent carefully depicts the reasons for the growth of digital trade internationally and the evolving environment surrounding such trade. In particular, it presents the various attempts and motives for regulating digital trade – or for avoiding excessive specific regulation – at national and international level. In this field as in others, history is always a good starting point before contemplating the future.

In a sense, most past developments were conditioned by the rise and fall of different types of barriers. To start at the early days, international trade was always facing a natural barrier: the distance barrier. What new electronic technologies brought about was an erosion of this barrier. Distance mattered less and less for traders. This freed an immense potential for trade. Even more so because others were confronted with another type of barrier: lack of appropriate technological tools hindered regulators in their attempts to enforce specific (trade restrictive) rules on e-commerce. This is what Sacha Wunsch-Vincent calls the pristine state of e-commerce. With the advent of more sophisticated new technologies, regulators are now able to intervene. Interestingly, one main motive for enacting specific e-commerce rules is in order to reduce yet another barrier: namely the lack of confidence among market players, which is seen as hindering trade. With more stringent regulation, confidence in e-commerce would improve, which would allow trade to expand further.