U.S. vs. China: Digital-Trade Policies and E-commerce Infrastructures' Effects on Medium-Sized Enterprises' Export Performance

Digital trade governance and e-commerce infrastructure jointly shape how medium-sized enterprises (MEs) access foreign customers, manage compliance, and scale internationally. This paper compares the United States and China, showing how differences in cross-border data governance, payment systems, and logistics ecosystems produce distinct internationalization pathways for MEs. Through comparative policy and text analysis, synthesis of open empirical studies, and two firm-level vignettes, the paper identifies mechanisms by which data regulations, platform interoperability, payment settlement systems, and logistics capabilities affect export intensity, time to market, and compliance costs. The United States open cloud orientation supports scalable digital service exports but creates administrative complexity through fragmented privacy and national-security rules. Chinas integrated platform and payment stack accelerates platform-led scaling for product exporters while its data-sovereignty measures raise compliance costs for cross-jurisdictional data processing. The paper concludes with policy and managerial recommendations to reduce export frictions for medium-sized firms and outlines empirical strategies for future causal work.