Avoiding TTIP Redux

Ten Principles for U.S. Trade Negotiations with the European Union, with Gabriella Beaumont-Smith, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #3480, April 8, 2020. "Since the collapse of the negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in 2016, trade tensions between the U.S. and the European Union have increased. In July 2018, the U.S. and the EU agreed to negotiate a trade agreement, and in October 2018, the U.S. released its negotiating objectives for trade talks with the EU. These objectives are generic and based on a vision of “balanced” and managed trade that is excessively pessimistic about the value of free trade. Negotiating with the EU will not be easy: The EU’s support for regulatory harmonization and its proclivity for accompanying its free trade agreements with broad political declarations are both unacceptable. The U.S. and the EU should learn the lesson of TTIP, and prefer a narrow, principled agreement that increases market-based competition and which can be negotiated rapidly, to an effort to negotiate a wider agreement that fails and thereby only gives rise to further animosity."