The story is told from inside the international high-technology industry effort that helped conceive the ITA, develop the proposal, build support for it, and move it onto the international trade agenda. It follows that effort from the trade-policy problems confronting the rapidly changing information technology industry through the agreement reached at the WTO Ministerial Conference in Singapore in December 1996—and then asks whether lessons from that experience might help inform trade policy for the AI era.

How to Read This Project
ITAtoAITA is presented here as a five-part manuscript. No subscription is necessary to read it. To begin at the beginning, use the navigation bar at the top of this page and select “The IT Revolution.” Links at the end of each section will then take you through the manuscript in sequence.

Read the Project

When Trade Policy Met the Information Technology Revolution

How trade policy adapted to the information technology revolution, changing business practices, and increasingly complex global supply chain

From an Idea to the ITA

How the original industry concept developed, broadened from an initial North American approach, and ultimately became the proposal for the Information Technology Agreement.

Building the Coalition, Building the Consensus

How a coalition of high-technology companies was organized in the United States and abroad, building the industry and government support needed to move the ITA toward international acceptance.

From the ITA Proposal to Global Acceptance

How the ITA moved through Transatlantic, Quad, APEC, and WTO diplomacy to the Singapore agreement, the achievement of critical mass, and implementation of the agreement.

Trade Policy for the AI World

What the experience of the ITA may teach us about the very different trade-policy challenges of artificial intelligence—and whether it could provide a starting point for thinking about an Artificial Intelligence Trade Agreement, or AITA.